Epox 4PDA2+ thoughts / tweaks

B

Badger_sly

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2002
Messages
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If anyone could give thoughts / ideas / suggestions /etc. on the Epox 4PDA2+ (Rev 2.0) motherboard, I would appreciate it.

So far, this is my top candidate for my upgrade, along with a 2.8C. I'm going from a P4 1.6A @ 2.2 on an Epox 4BDA2+, which has been an amazing board, especially for OCing. Two sticks of 512MB OCZ pc3200 will be carrying over to the new board.

Here is a review with the boards specs (most other reviews fall in the same line):
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=84
 
I sure do mine. i am running the board with a 2.4C I'm amazed that this board is jus recently been discovered by so many when it is so damn good. Better late than never I say.

Here is a blurb from OC prices review... the conclusion.

The 4PDA2+ V2.0 is an absolutely fantastic motherboard. I've seen a lot of Springdales since the chipset's introduction, and the 4PDA2+ V2.0 stands head and shoulders above them all. The board, somehow, manages to get everything right. The layout is the best on any Springdale, and the best I've seen on any board in years. The board is an overclocking monster, I'm sure that with water it could easily surpass 300mhz FSB. It simply does not know the meaning of the word quit. Voltage options are what I would expect from Epox, (read: far beyond sanity) and the board finally gets the Vcore to match. As if that weren't enough, the board has features you can't get anywhere else (Raid 1.5 and SATA hot-swap), and a reasonable price ($140-150 in the US). If there is such a thing as motherboard perfection, the 4PDA2+ V2.0 comes damn close. It deserves nothing less than our highest award. Very highly recommended.

I very highly recommend it also!! Also it is now only$108 @ newegg!!
Whole review here
http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?rev_id=172&page=1&action=reviews

Weldzilla
 
With a 2.4C and OCZ 4000 gold This board can really rock!! Check out these sandra scores!!! Smoking stuff!!!
Testing
After a bit of initial experimentation using my Epox 4PDA2+ V2.0 i865PE and 2.4C, I discovered that 2.5-7-3-3 was the tightest stable timings possible, regardless of clock frequency. The ram was fine until about 480mhz, when reducing to 2.5-7-4-4 was required to retain stability. 2.5-7-4-4 and 3.0V worked up to about 540mhz, (already easily surpassing the limits of the XMS4000 we tested). The OCZ PC4000 Gold wasn’t about to quit there, however. This Epox board allows for up to 3.3V of Vdimm, so I upped it to 3.3. (Note: I would strongly urge anyone against trying this, 3.3V is enough to seriously damage your ram.)

Sandra Score @ DDR 594!!! 6884 Now that is freakin' bandwidth!!




I was expecting a CMOS reset at 3.3V, but to my surprise, the system booted into Windows without issue. After reducing timings further to 3-8-4-4, I was able to get this ram to a record shattering 297mhz FSB @ 1:1 (That’s DDR 594 folks.) At that speed my CPU was running at 3.56ghz, which is pretty much the absolute limit that my basic air cooled setup will support. It is certainly a possibility that someone with a Vapochill or some serious water cooling may be able to get more than 600mhz out of this ram. Testing was done with FSB at 297mhz, at both 5:4 (for DDR 475) and 1:1 (for DDR 594). The PC4000 Gold has no problem with async operation, but as you'll see below, you're going to want to use 1:1.

Here is the link to that review also;
http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?rev_id=177&page=1&action=reviews
It is only 3 pages, check it out

WeldZilla
 
I'm going to give my OCZ Enhanced pc3200 a shot and see what kind of an OC I can get, but damn........ I checked out that OCZ Gold pc4000 on Newegg and that memory looks like some killer stuff. $292 for 2 512MB sticks is kind of .... OUCH! I'll probably budget it in within a couple of weeks.
 
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