Introduction
EPoX 8RDA3G nForce2 Ultra 400
The nForce2's bandwagon keeps rollin'. That's in spite of VIA's, and SiS' to a lesser extent, push for present Socket A performance leadership. However, with rumblings of hither-to unseen performance from AMD's very latest 64-bit CPUs, 32-bit AMD processors will soon be shoved out of the limelight. Right now, though, the Barton and nForce2 bundle is pretty appealing, especially with the jam-packed nForce2 providing all manner of integrated extras.
The slight mark against NVIDIA's chipset has always been price. A fully fledged, retail nForce2 Ultra 400 can and often hits the painful £100 mark. If you recall our article on the prodigious ability of certain XP2500+ Bartons, you'll know that performance on the cheap has always been one of AMD's enduring traits. What better, then, than to have a powerful motherboard, based on the impressive Crush 18D chipset, yet one retailing at more palatable levels.
It seems as if EPoX has heard and understood this fact all too well. The 8RDA3G, therefore, is a full nForce2 Ultra 400 board, but it does away with some of the more esoteric features. The idea is to produce a fast, stable and comparatively feature-rich yet inexpensive motherboard. The previous sentence appears to contain a number of contradictory remarks. Let's now see if EPoX's latest board can fulfill our demanding criteria.
