Review: EPoX EP-8RDA3+ nForce2 Ultra 400

Specifications in detail

Specifications in detail

Processors

• Supports Socket A (Socket 462) for AMD® Athlon™ / Athlon XP / Duron™ processor
• Supports up to XP3200+ processor and higher (Thoroughbred and Barton compatible)
• Support for 200 / 266FSB / 333FSB / 400FSB processors.

• Northbridge: NVIDIA nForce2 SPP (Ultra 400)
• Southbridge: NVIDIA nForce2 MCP

• 3 x 184pin DDR DIMM slots
• DDR200 / DDR266 / DDR333 / DDR400 support @ 2.5v
• 3GB maximum system RAM (non-ECC), 2GB for DDR400
• Dual DDR architecture combines 2 independent 64-bit memory controllers
• Dual DDR provides up to 6.4GB/s of buffered system bandwidth

• One AGP 8/4x AGP compliant
• 5x 32-bit PCI 33MHz slots

• 1 Floppy port supports 2 FDD
• 1 Parallel port
• 1 iRDA connector
• PS/2 Keyboard
• PS/2 Mouse
• 3 Audio Jacks (NVIDIA APU via CMI9739A)
• 6 x USB 2.0 connectors from MCP SB (4 on-board + 2 by an additional bracket, not supplied)
• Headers for 3 FireWire ports and 1 USB2.0 port

• An IDE controller on the NForce2 MCP chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66/ operation modes
• Can connect up to 4 IDE devices
• Sil3112A S-ATA bridge supports 2 S-ATA ports in independent, RAID0 and RAID1 formats

• NVIDIA 6-channel sound via CMI 9739A 6-channel CODEC.
• Supports real time software AC3 encoding and S/PDIF-Out

• NVIDIA 10/100 LAN via Realtek RTL8201LB physical interface.
• Second 10/100 LAN from Realtek RTL8101L single-chip controller
• FireWire support (3x 1394a) via Agere FW323A single-chip controller

• EPoX PowerBIOS
• FSB speeds of 100MHz - 250MHz in 1MHz stepless increments
• 1.1 - 2.2v Vcore adjustable in 0.025v increments
• 2.5v - 2.9v DDR voltage adjustment in 0.13v increments
• 1.5 - 1.8v AGP adjustment in 0.1v increments
• 1.6 - 2.0v Vdd adjustment in 0.2v increments

We wonder why EPoX passed over the MCP-T in favour of a number of discrete controllers.