EPOX 9NPA+(nForce 4 Ultra) Testing Report

[DoGMaN]

PSU?

No it turns out I just need to think before I do things. I installed the same drivers that I had been using for my NF3 board, not even thinking that the NF4 doesn't use the AGP driver. Got it all straightened out. Works like a dream now. I feel pretty silly though

[omega65]

I would have made that mistake - thanks for the (obvious in retrospect) Info! :thumbsup:

[DoGMaN]

Good news this board loves BH-5. Hopefully I'll get around to testing the booster tonight. Looking good though with the 3.1v that is available.

[windwithme]

windwithme - what chipset drivers are you using? Mine seems to spontaneously shut down for no reason. Only with the nforce chipset drivers installed though.

Use Msi NEO4 NV driver

[aver]

Would this be a recommended board to use for an overclocking setup? I have been looking for boards to complete my setup for about a month now and nothing new is coming out.. or at least fast enough.

This is the board I am looking forward to the most (DFI is too pricey for me) but I have heard nothing about street date....

Why is it that all these Nforce4 boards are taking so long to hit the market?

[DoGMaN]

I'd say this board works pretty darn well for overclocking. I'm still searching for my limit, but I am currently prime stable at 272x10 with my BH-5 running 2-2-2-5 227MHz (166 divider) 1.575v core 3.1v dimm.

The board overvolts a little 0.009-0.025 but the voltage is overall pretty stable. Max mem voltage measured is 3.122v idle and 3.120v loaded.

[Skip]

hey, i'm going to be on the phone with them because of an RMA gone bad, they said they'll offer me special pricing on their boards. any chance i can get them to get me one of these?

[windwithme]

Nice FETs I think. How big are those caps? How is the CPU voltage fluctuation?

While CPU voltage 1.4v
CPU voltage fluctuation

NEO4 1.36~1.39
9NPA 1.392~1.41

[Ronin]

Any updates on this board is is still running nice and stable and any problems?

[QuadDamage]

this is one crappy board. I'm using one at the moment in my gaming rig unfortunately. SB Audigy doesn't work on this mobo. Once i install the drivers for it my cpu is 100% loaded and it takes 15 minutes to reboot. On-board chip works, well kinda. It plays sounds 2x-3x the original speed. A three and a half minute song takes a minute to finish. Quake3 announcer sounds like some castrated tranny, lol what a POS.
Epox once again proves to be a cheap, semi-reliable mobo manufacturer.

[DoGMaN]

Quad - I didn't run into any sound problems with the board I had. What driver version are you using? Try using the PAX-YouP driver for your SB Audigy. I've found that it works better on the nF4 boards.

[b|gf|sh]

DoGMaN, u find out if the booster works then?

Thanks.

[sevenka]

EDITED:

Link Removed. No Spamming Allowed.

[b|gf|sh]

there's answer in this link ===> []

Whats wrong with answering yes/no

(Sorry, google translation didn't work)

[Trueno]

Some news about this board?

Does DDR Booster work with it?

[thebluesgnr]

Since the booster kills the 9NDA3 I wouldn't want to be the first to try it on this one, I haven't looked at the pics but I assume they have the same or very similar designs for Vdimm.

[althes]

It wont work because of the 24pin atx connector

[esoteradactyl]

It wont work because of the 24pin atx connector

the booster will kill any board that gets the vdimm from the 5v rail. all of epox's a64 boards do this, hence why they die from it....

[ls7corvete]

Can anyone confirm my thoughts that the voltage reading is too high? at stock which should be 1.4 cpuid and others report 1.5v.

My friends board is the same as well....

[dymONE]

Yes i need point where i can masure voltage of CPU ...

[ls7corvete]

The legs of the mosfets, should be a better explaination in the forums, STF.

[Trueno]

Hi,

Got news about this board. This time, HardOCP reviewed Epox 9NPA+ ULTRA. The reviewer did some overclock, runned prime95 and other torture tests for 2 days without stability issues.

Looks like Epox 9NPA+ is one of best bets on NF4 ULTRA arena.

>>The ups:

1- Northbridge position, teoricaly permits swap that cooler for a noiseless ZM-NB47J without problems.
2- CPU position allows Zalman 7700 use.
3- Rock solid stability.
4- Some OCing ability like vdim adjustable to 3.1 V.
5- Good performance.
6- Excellent voltage regulator output.

>>The downs:

1- Only one GigaBit Ethernet
2- Active cooling on chipset
3- DIMM slots proximity may cause some problems when installing RAM with big heatsinks, like some models from Corsair.
4- VDIM could be adjustable to a value higher than 3.1 V.
5- Lack of a PCI-E 4X slot like that on new Asus's A8N-E mobo.
6- Single BIOS (versus GigaByte's models).

About alternatives:

- MSI Neo 4 appears to be plaged with USB issues and other horror histories. Google for it.

- Abit's models have too many active coolers on it.

- New Asus A8N-E is new . But i'm keeping an eye on it because of PCI-E 4X and good components disposition (mainly NF4 chipset).

- Albatron (the one that didn't suffered the capacitor leakage hell) still doesn't have a NF4 ultra model.

- DFI's LANPARTY UT Ultra-D : hummm... price? Also, maybe installing alternative NB heatsink will be dificult. I'm keeping an eye on it too and doing some research about it as dual Gb Ethernet, 2x PCI-E 16x and 1x PCI-E 4X are appealing. Update(03/31/2005): This board has too many horror histories to be considered an option . However, keep in mind DFI UT probably sold more NF4 UT boards than Epox and, generally, DFI boards are tweaked to extremes by OCers. This can explain more DOAs, sudden deaths, RMAs etc.

- Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9: passive cooling solution.

Well... From the extensive research that I did on the web, found two bad lemons on the 9NPA's tree. The first is on this thread and concerns to SB Audigy incompatibility and onboard audio playing at Fast Forward speeds. The second (on anandtech's forum) is about MSI X800XL incompatibility with this board.


I'm going to set up two NF4 ULTRA systems. One for me and one for my father.

On my list are:

1-Epox 9NPA+ ULTRA (Father?)
2-Asus A8N-E
3-Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9


About points to measure voltages on this board, didn´t find anything on the web

[thebluesgnr]

- Abit's models have too many active coolers on it.

Thanks to uGuru that's a non-issue (if it's noise levels that concern you).

[Trueno]

Thanks to uGuru that's a non-issue (if it's noise levels that concern you).

Hi thebluesgnr,

You have a point. uGuru allows to turn off those OTES fans, making Abit's Fatal1ty AN8 on the same noise level of other boards on the market.

I'm not an engineer, but are those OTES fans realy needed on a board that goes vdimm 2.8 V? I don't know how AN8 1.8 V max on chipset and 1.85 V max for CPU compares to other brand's mobos.

However, the main concern, for me, is the missing of old parallel and serial conectors as I'm thinking to start to play with some PIC and FPGA programming. I know that is possible to program PICs using only a parallel port and some wires.


For OCing, i liked the Fatal1ty's DIMM coolers

Now, talking about 9NPA+, a post of a xtreme overclock appeared on xtremesystems.org today.

[RipperFk]

I have 2x512 one-sides modules Hynix D43. It`s stable work at 260MHz 2.5-3-3-5-1T 3.1v with active cooling.
I want use this memory at 270 2.5-3-3-5-1T. But need highly voltage (3.2-3.3v).
Need Vmem voltmod. What I do this?