Epox Nforce2 and 2700+, Epox KT400 boards reviewed

NVIDIA LAUNCHED its new chipset called the Nforce 2 back in August and since then we were itching to get our hands on it. Luckily for us Epox provided us with a board were we could see all the glory of the highly anticipated Nforce 2 chipset. We knew that this chipset would perform better than the Nforce, since Nvidia learned a lot about the BIOS, the South Bridge and the drivers. It's hard to make everything work together properly.

About Nforce 2
Nforce 2 is a DDR 400 chipset that needs to operate in synchronous mode*, meaning that the front side bus (FSB) of your Athlon processor and the DDR memory clock should set at the same value. AMD was kind enough to give us a 2700+ to be able to see Nforce 2, since its designed to work on a 333MHz front side bus.

The DDR (double data rate) memory works in Dual DDR mode if you use two DIMM modules in two different banks. This is something that Nvidia introduced with the original Nforce but this time using DDR400, even though it's still not recognised by JEDEC, the industry memory standards body.

The board uses a 128 bit memory interface, twice as much than KT400. That certainly doesn't mean it will run twice as fast but it can actually give some performance increase if you are using both banks. With Nforce 2 you should have two memory modules for it to work properly. If you use it with just one memory module, you will use only 64 bit memory banks obviously meaning that you will lose some performance on the chipset. 128 bit memory architecture is the right solution for memory bandwidth hungry Athlon processors, and Nvidia learned to use this for the second time with Nforce 2. 128 bit memory interface delivers 6.4 GB/s in the best case.

Nvidia chose to use the SPP name for a chip that we usually call the North Bridge where SPP stands for Signal Platform Processor. The other graphics chipset it will soon introduce will be called IGP -- Integrated Graphic Processor.

This chipset gives you AGP 8X so that if you plug AGP 8X card inside and use the AMD Hypertransport marchitecture that will let it speak at 800 MB/s with the South Bridge chip. Nvidia calls this the MCP -- Media Communication Processor since it's "more than just a South Bridge" as Nvidia has said many times.

As for the South Bridge, we are talking about two variants -- the MCP and the MCP-T. MCP is the not so fancy variation that brings standard Ultra ATA 133 support , USB 2.0 and 1.1, with Nvidia LAN 10/ 100 card, AC 97 sounds support and it's pin compatible with MCP-T.

MCP-T is a fancy version with Dual LAN support, designed for offices where you need gateways for internet connections and apart from the Nvidia LAN card it uses the well recognised 3Com name since that is what corporate users want for their LANs, apparently.

MCP-T also supports six USB 2.0 ports, three Firewire ports and Ultra ATA 133 controller.

For audio, it uses the well known, best integrated so far Nvidia APU -- the Application Processing Unit, and it has finally introduced the well kept brand Sound Storm, that some board manufacturers will use. It has 192 2D and 64 3d sounds capable Dolby digital surround and we can say that this is a very nice sound solution integrated on a motherboard.

Different manufacturers will decide which features to include on their boards, particularly so in the case of the South Bridge features.

Epox Nforce 2 8RDA+ board
Epox is well known for making nice stable boards, which are easy to overclock.

The Epox 8RDA+ is the first board from Epox based on the Nforce 2. The 8RDA+ uses Crush 18, one and one only Nforce 2 SPP Northbridge and the Nvidia MCP-T South Bridge. Even though it's an MCP-T board it uses only the Nvidia LAN card and AC 97 sound and has USB 2.0, two Ultra ATA 133 controllers and two Firewire ports.

The board has one pink AGP 8X slot, six PCI slots and three memory slots, with one separated to give you clear idea how to use 2 banks of Nforce 2. Both SPP and MCP use only passive cooling solutions which is good since it will eliminate some case noise.

The board is equipped with two digital LCD "Post ports" that will generate error numbers if there are problems at boot up time or configuration, making it much easier to fix it.

You get two riser cards with an extra USB 2.0 port and Firewire ports and if you miss your midi port, you get it with this motherboard. Epox is using some nice marchitecture such as Magic Bios tool that lets you flash BIOS from Windows. We tried this, and it worked perfectly.

All you need to do is to connect to the Net, and download the BIOS automatically, as the program looks at the Epox database, and if there is an update, lets you download it to your PC. All you need to do then is to press Flash button and in a few moments, and after a restart, the new BIOS is installed.

The board is Bluetooth compatible and it will help you have better connectivity if you get the risers that are not included with this board. You will find USMD hidden on your installation CD -- a tool that will help you monitor your board in Windows that could be very useful. In the BIOS, you will find some amazing settings, including settings for memory that let you speed up the board without compromising the way it works.

Last, but not least there is a nice I/O case shield to tart up, or prettify your existing case.

The FSB 333 MHz based 2700+ worked without any problems on this board. The only thing that wemiss on this board is a Raid controller and Serial ATA, but we're sure Epox will come out with a version supporting this if it thinks it necessary.

Epox 8K9A2+ KT 400 based board
We mentioned this board some time ago when we said that with a new BIOS, Athlon Thoroughbred processors are unlocked. We tried the 2700+ and we were right, the multiplier on this board is unlocked. The board uses the Via KT400 chipset paired with Via's 8235 Southbridge and some extra chips to help things along.

This comes in a well designed designed green box that is very practical and easy to carry around. When you buy it in retail, you will find a green CD and manual and board with a very nice cooler on chipset that will glow in a nice blue color when you turn your board on.

The board features one purple APG 8X with six PCI, two Ultra ATA 133 controllers painted blue and two red colored Raid controllers powered by the Highpoint 372 chip. It also has a post pos screen as seen on the Nforce 2 board and many other Epox boards, nice designed and accessible power, on and off connectors, three DIMM slots, four USB 2.0 ports on board, LAN card onboard as well as AC 97 sound.

The new Serial ATA marchitecture is of course here and Silicon Image chip takes care of this with two S-ATA connectors. You get an S-ATA cable with the board as well as standard UDMA and floppy cables, a midi port and two more USB ports on a raiser card. Epox ships an IO shield to cover the butt of the case and prettify its rear end.

Features
We like the BIOS on this board but that's something common to most Epox boards, where it's a piace of cake to overclock your CPU, set your memory and go BIOS-tweaking.

The board uses USMD, the Magic BIOS tool mentioned above, and is Bluetooth ready.

Testing
We used the following hardware:

AMD Athlon 2700+ 2.16 GHz clocked FSB 333 CPU (13 x 166)
2 x Corsair PC3200 XMS DDR 400 modules
Sapphire Radeon 9700 PRO
Or Nvidia reference Geforce 4 TI 4600
Western Digital 40 GB 5400 drive
Aopen CD-RW 40x12x28
Targa Visionary 19 inch Display

We need to notice that Corsair memory we used was verystable and was able to perform on 2/2/2/5 settings, as the box stated.

Results
In Quake 3 we tried to use aggressive memory settings to give it a try to a Corsair DDR 400 memory and we were able to get some impressive numbers by just using faster memory settings.

When we used the word "normal" that denotes default memory settings and name of the board with chipset label means that we were using aggressive memory settings. 2/2/2/5 is the fastest that you can set of these boards and not compromise stability.

You can clearly see that Quake 3 benefits from both Nforce 2 and faster memory settings. The figures show a clear lead of the Nforce 2 chipset over KT400. Nforce 2 benefits from faster memory settings and we recommend you use it with quality DDR 400.

In 3d Mark 2001 SE, Nforce 2 also leads with 1100 points over KT400 using the same components.

In Aquamark Nforce 2 is clearly faster than the KT400 board. At 1024x768 resolution Epox 8RDA+ Nforce 2 based board has 30 FPS advantage over KT400 chipset and this is where you can see the benefits of dual channel DDR 400.

In Sandra 2003, the results are almost the same for the multimedia and CPU benchmarks since we were comparing the same CPU on two motherboards, while in the memory benchmarks Nforce 2 takes a lead with 150 to 200MB more bandwidth than the KT400 board.

Conclusion
There is no question right now that Nforce 2 is the fastest chipset for the Athlon processor on the market. 2700+ with FSB 333 clearly benefits from dual DDR memory and it will run your games and applications faster than any other chipset currently shipping. As for KT400 it lags behind somewhat, but at the same time offers a stable overclocking platform especially since you have CPU multiplier unlocked. We were able to reach for the sky with its FSB making this board desirable for overclockers. This board also benefits from Raid and S-ATA controllers.

With an amazing price of €129 Euros excluding VAT for KT400 based 8K9A2+ or €112 Euros ex VAT for the Nforce 2 based 8RDA+, both boards are great value.

Nforce 2 is clearly a performance winner while the KT400 board has feature benefits on its side. It's up to you to decide which feature set best suits your need, but both boards are highly recommended. µ

* We originally said asynchronous. Sorry.