Conclusion

EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra is the first mainboard on nForce4 Ultra to enter our test lab, and it would be rather hasty to make any final judgments about the chipset yet. Still, we can say that EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra is going to be an interesting product due to the chipset used and the efforts of the EPoX engineers invested into its development. Combining a lot of useful features with excellent overclockability, this mainboard is going to make a good buy (we think its price won’t be very high). EPoX’ product range includes many mainboards that have become hits among overclockers and the 9NPA+ Ultra may become one, too.

Highs:

• Overclocking-friendly features, very high overclockability;
• Good stability and reliability;
• Excellent networking capabilities, including ActiveArmor and NVIDIA Firewall 2.0;
• Four Serial ATA channels and two Parallel ATA channels with support of RAID 0, 1 and 0+1;
• Eight-channel sound;
• Support of FireWire;
• Integrated POST controller.

Lows:

• Rather low performance;
• Awkward PCB design;
• Not very rich set of accessories.