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The Epox
4PDA2+ v2.0 Motherboard:
"A green
board?" we hear you ask. Yes, your eyes are not
deceiving you. Blame it on the Hulk, but this
"beast" of a board is backed with a standard bright green
PCB with maroon or burgundy highlights for the AGP, IDE
RAID, and Dual DDR DIMM slots. The RAID controllers
are differentiated from the standard IDE ports by the
coloring scheme, with maroon for RAID (matching the
rounded IDE cables) and yellow for standard. If
anything, the yellow ports almost seem out of place, where
a more subdued color would have been more pleasing to the
eye. (Ah, the artist in us is revealed but we
digress...) All of the IDE and floppy connectors are
grouped along the edge of the board which should keep
cabling together if not a bit too tight should they all be
in use. Four SATA ports can also be
found in the lower left corner, surrounding the Silicon
Image SIL3112A SATA and HighPoint HPT372 IDE RAID
controllers.
The layout is
well thought out and simple to follow. The RAID and
SATA controllers are where they should be, close to the
actual ports. The same holds true for the Agere
1394a FireWire controller, sitting just to the right of
the three FireWire headers along the side of the board.
Five PCI and the AGP 3.0 slot provide means for adding in
additional components. Just past the slots are the
CMI9739A 6-channel audio CODEC and Broadcom BCM5705
Gigabit LAN controller. The Audio-IN and CD-IN
headers used in conjunction with the CMI9739A don't come
with the usual plastic retention clip that we were used to
seeing, but there shouldn't be any issue connecting the
wires, and this is mostly a legacy-type connection anyway
that most people can opt not to use.
Glittering
above the rest of the components was the gold-plated
heatsink with the Epox logo. It was a finned type,
passively cooled, and should be ample enough to cool off
the North Bridge underneath without taking up one of the
three fan headers. We also should mention that the
AGP/DIMM slot conflict was not an issue with this board.
We did not have any problems when removing the DIMMS while
our Tachyon G9500 video card was installed. One
feature that we really wanted to point out was the LED
Diagnostic found in the lower left corner, near the front
panel connector. Should something go awry during the
POST routines, a two-digit code is displayed.
Quickly checking the code against the appendix list in the
manual can alert the user to the source of the problem.
This may not be as elegant as Asus' POST Reporter, but it
is still a friendly measure, especially for new system
builders. One possible side effect, however, may be
a weird sequence when booting the system. When doing
a cold boot, the system powers up as the LED cycles
through its codes, shuts down momentarily, and then POSTS
and loads in Windows. Thankfully, this doesn't
happen during warm boots and resets. It actually
caused much fretting after initially building the system
as we wondered whether there was a real issue here, but
nothing ever seems to be amiss and the system operates
normally.
The BIOS:
Once again, we
were presented with an AWARD BIOS, whose screens are so
familiar that it makes setting up a system a relatively
easy task. Our first stop was in the Advanced
Chipset Features, where we checked in on the memory
timings. By default, the DRAM timings found our GEIL
DDR sticks at some relaxed timings, so we toggled the
first option the 'Manual' and chose the most aggressive
settings the board offered, ending up at 2-5-2-2.
Epox's version of PAT on the 4PDA2+ V2 board is labeled
"Accelerated Memory Mode", and there are multiple options
as to how aggressive you would like this set at.
While we left it as "Max", there were also "Turbo",
"Expert" and "Standard" settings for those inclined to use
them. Moving onto the PC Health screen, all of the
necessary temperatures and voltages are monitored and be
quickly glanced at for trouble spots. In general, we
found that the VCore rail was consistently lower than what
we set it at, so we usually bumped it up a bit higher than
normal to compensate. One interesting feature that
we had not seen before was an option to display the PC
Health monitors during the POST routine. Now, at
every system boot, temperatures and voltages can be
viewed, something especially welcome when overclocking the
CPU.
Speaking of
overclocking, the original version of the 4PDA2+ received
a few knocks for not providing enough voltage options,
especially for the CPU VCore. This has been
corrected with the second version. The Front Side
Bus can be set up to 350MHz, while CPU voltages range as
high as 1.825V, using .025V steppings. It's not
quite as high as we have seen on some of the other
Springdales, but even during overclocking we never went
over 1.775V. The VDIMM voltage options are also
plenty, going from 2.6V up to 3.3V, in .1V steps.
Since raising the FSB has global effects on the system,
the memory frequency can be modified using the standard
ratios of 1:1, 5:4, and 6:4 (3:2) in order to bring the
memory speed back into an operable range. The AGP/PCI
clock can also be modified, using dividers, or setting an
exact speed (such as 66MHz) in the subtle tuning item.
What this all comes down to is, Epox listened to the
consumer, made some changes, and the 4PDA2+ Version 2.0
motherboard now has what it needs to be competitive with
any of the top boards in the Spingdale arena.
How the 4PDA2+ stacks
up with the rest
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