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- Date:
- Sunday , March 27, 2005
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
EPoX EP-9NPA+ ULTRA
The 9NPA+ ULTRA is one of many offerings from EPoX based on the nForce4 chipset. We run it through our usual barrage of testing and find one of the first boards from EPoX that we can recommend to our readers in quite some time.
BIOS
The 9NPA+ ULTRA’s BIOS is based on the well known Phoenix AwardBIOS design. The BIOS version shown in the screenshots is version 9npa5302.
The Advanced BIOS Features menu contains various options for system initialization, including options for setting the access order of boot devices. When a USB 2.0 hard drive type device is attached to the system and detected at system startup, the drive shows in the Hard Disk Boot Priority submenu. The priority of specific items in this menu can be changed using either the + and – keys or the Page Up and Page Down keys.
The Integrated Peripherals menu contains submenus for configuring the various board-integrated devices. The IDE RAID Boot ROM option controls the NVIDIA RAID BIOS. This option must be enabled for the RAID BIOS to display on system startup. The IDE Function Setup submenu contains all options related to IDE and SATA device configuration. The RAID Enable option controls the status of the integrated RAID controller, and must be enabled along with the IDE RAID Boot ROM option from the upper menu for the RAID BIOS to show on system startup. Notice that all IDE and SATA ports, including the IDE master and slave channels within a single IDE port, can be individually configured for RAID operation. If a port is configured for RAID operation, it will not be detected on system initialization, but it will show as available through the NVIDIA RAID BIOS. The Onboard Device submenu contains settings for configuring the onboard USB 2.0, audio, and NVIDIA LAN controllers. The status of the diagnostic LED display can be enabled here as well.
The PC Health Status menu displays real time stats on all BIOS monitored voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures. You can also configure system responses to certain temperature related events. The ACPI Shutdown Temperature setting controls system shutdown based on a system temperature, with a maximum settable threshold of 75 degrees C. The Smart Fan Temperature setting controls the speed of the fan attached to the CPU fan header, with full power supplied to the attached fan when the configured temperature threshold is breeched.
The PnP/PCI/PCI-E Configurations menu contains all settings related to configuring system IRQs and PnP related settings. While you cannot manipulate the IRQ setting tied to specific devices directly, you can specify the pool settings for specific IRQ numbers using the IRQ Resources submenu. The submenu is enabled when the Resource Controlled by option is set to Manual.
The Power BIOS Features menu contains all settings for manipulating board bus speeds and voltages, with the exception of the HyperTransport speed setting. The HyperTransport speed is set through the Advanced Chipset Features menu.
The CPU FSB speed is controlled through the CPU Frequency option. The BIOS allows for a possible maximum FSB of 400MHz. The PCI-Express bus speed is asynchronous to the CPU FSB, and can be set to a maximum of 145MHz through the PCIE Clock option. The base speed for any DDR modules plugged in to the board is determined through the Memory Frequency (Mhz) option. The memory speed is configured through predefined ratios, with the ratio listed as DDR FSB:CPU FSB and all ratios assuming a base CPU FSB of 200MHz: 100MHz is 1:2; 133MHz is 2:3; 166MHz is 5:6; and 200MHz is 1:1. When the CPU Ratio Control option is enabled, the CPU multiplier value can be manually configured through the CPU Clock Ratio option. The multiplier values available range from 5x to the default multiplier setting of the CPU currently in use. The CPU speed is determined by multiplying the selected CPU multiplier with the current CPU FSB setting.
The voltage supplied to the CPU is set via the CPU Voltage option. This setting allows for a maximum of .25V over the default CPU voltage to be used, which should be adequate for a good overclocking range. Through the DIMM Voltage option, you can configure the supplied DIMM voltage to a maximum of 3.1V. With this amount of voltage going through your DIMM modules, some type of active cooling becomes necessary. The Chipset Voltage options controls the voltage supplied to the nForce4 Ultra chipset, with a more than adequate 1.8V maximum allowed.