Features

The 9NPA+ uses the nForce4 ultra chipset which provides support for PCI Express, four 3GB/s Serial-ATA ports that can be used with nVRAID , ten USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet controller with nVidia firewall and through the CPU, dual channel memory support.

On top of that, Epox adds a Firewire controller and the Realtek ACL850 codec for providing 8.1 channel audio output with optical connectivity. The board also had the diagnostic LED on it along with reset and power switches.

BIOS

Epox generally provides decent overclocking options in their BIOS and that’s pretty much what we got with the 9NPA+. The memory frequency and timings cant be adjusted to match your module while most of the integrated peripherals can be enabled/disabled from the BIOS. We did face a funny big which reported the CPU temperature at 178 degrees however, this is just a BIOS issue that will surely get fixed in the upcoming updates.

For overclocking, you have the option of selecting FSB speeds upto 400MHz, however, the multiplier adjustment only goes does upto 8X which could somewhat limit your overclocking as Athlon64 CPUs are multiplier unlocked. You can also apply some very decent voltage options such as 3.1V for the memory, +0.35V for the CPU and 1.8V for the chipset.

We were able to use the board quite stably at 334MHz MHz FSB and that is too because of the 8X multiplier limit where our 3500+ CPU reached its potential. Maybe a lower multiplier would’ve helped us go higher, but hey, even 334MHz is amongst the best speeds we’ve reached.

Stability

The 9NPA+ generally ran pretty stable although we did face an occasional glitch- no matter what we did, the Memory test in PC Mark refused to run. We didn’t have any problems running Sandra memory tests or SuperPI or any other benchmark for that matter but for some weird reason, the PC Mark memory test would just not run.

Other than that, we found the board stable enough with all other applications. We tested it out with a couple of different memory modules as well without any problems. Its probably just a matter of a new BIOS that will solve these small issues with the board.