Print this article

EPoX 4SDA+ SiS645


Date
: 07/26/02 – 09:47:22 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: EPoX
Price: less than $100

Introduction

Back in April, our very own Tim took a closer look at the AOpen AX45-V P4 motherboard which is based upon the SiS645 chipset. We learned a great deal from that review. Although the SiS' 645 chipset is supposed to be the value Pentium 4 solution, it managed to perform quite good in that AX45-V review.

SiS (or Silicon Integrated Systems) came up with their P4 DDR chipset right after the P4X266(A) P4 DDR chipset (from VIA) had to deal with some issues that kept people from buying motherboards with that chipset on it. Just like most other motherboard chipsets, the SiS645 uses two chips, a northbridge (645) and a southbridge (961).

Today, we're about the check out how good/bad EPoX has integrated the SiS645 into their
4SDA+
motherboard. We'll have a look at the board layout, the specifications, the features, the BIOS (which is very important for tweaking enthusiasts!), and last but not least you'll get a clear image on how this monster stacks up against some other popular P4 motherboards.

If you want to know how the EPoX 4SDA+ and its SiS645 chipset with DDR333 support comes out of our torture sessions, you should definitely read on …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

You all know that we always try to make your stay at O² as comfortable as possible … so we took a small copy/paste from the EPoX website to show you the 4SDA+ specifications :

-
Supports Socket 478 Processors.

Intel Pentium® 4

-
SiS 645 AGPset.

-
Winbond Super Multi I/O Controller.

1 Floppy drive controller,
1 Parallel port (EPP, ECP),
2 Serial ports.

-
USB.

2 supported onboard.
6 support max (optional).

-
Award PnP BIOS. Flash upgradeable.

120MB ATAPI floppy drive and ZIP support!

-
Standard ATX form factor.

305mm x 245mm

-
UltraDMA EIDE Controllers.

PCI Bus IDE Port/UDMA100 x 2 (Up to 4 Devices)
Extra IDE controller using HPT372 UDMA133 + RAID x 2 (Up to 4 Devices).

-
400MHz Front Side Bus.

-
3x DIMM Slots for PC2100/PC2700.

3GB max. supported. NON-ECC only!

-
PS/2 connectors.

1 PS/2 mouse,
1 PS/2 keyboard.

-
6 (32-bit) PCI, & 1 AGP.

AGP supports 4x mode.

-
AC97 sound

Dual full-duplex Direct Sound channels
H/W Sound Blaster Pro for DOS legacy compatibility
FM synthesis for legacy compatibility
Supports game and MIDI port

As you can see on the various pictures, the 4SDA+ board has a 1/6/0 configuration: 1 AGP slot, 6 PCI slots, and 0 ISA or CNR slots. To me, this is by far the best setup a manufacturer can choose for a motherboard. I mean … who still needs an ISA slot these days?

The 4SDA+ features 3 DIMMs which can each hold a 1GB PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 memory module for a maximum of 3GB of NON-ECC DDR memory. That should be more than enough RAM to handle even the toughest tasks ;) Note that the motherboard can't take ECC memory …

The heart and soul of every motherboard is the chipset it is based on. As you already know, this time that chipset is called the 'SiS645' from Silicon Integrated Systems. The most important difference (read improvement) between the SiS645 and an Intel 845D chipset or a VIA P4X266 chipset for example is the DDR333 (PC2700) support. The SiS645 northbridge officially supports all Socket478 Pentium 4 processors running a 400MHz (QDR) FSB, AGP 2.0 with 4X mode and fast write support, and up to 3GB of unbuffered NON-ECC DDR RAM. The SiS961 southbridge is able to offer ATA100 support, 6 USB 1.0 ports, 6 PCI slots, the usual IO ports, 10/100Mbit onboard LAN, AC'97 onboard sound and onboard V.90 modem support. This means we won't be seeing native ATA133 support, USB 2.0, FireWire, … but that's not so abnormal considering the fact that this is not a brandnew chipset anymore.

As the name of the board implies, the 4SDA+ board we look at today here at Overclockers Online is the RAID version (the "+" indicates the presence of a RAID controller at EPoX). Of course, EPoX also has a non-RAID version (the 4SDA) available for those who don't need onboard RAID and want to save some $$$. The SiS961 southbridge allows you to hook up 4 IDE devices supporting ATA100. The High Point HPT372 RAID controller (RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1) enables you to connect another 4 devices and supports ATA133 devices! All this IDE goodness (native + RAID) results in 4 IDE connectors which can take no less than 8 IDE devices at the same time. Of course, the board also has a standard floppy connector. I wonder who's still using these :)

Onboard sound is also present on this board. It's using the AC'97 codec which isn't a good audio solution. The sound quality is very poor! In one sentence : The onboard sound solution makes you want to buy a new soundcard! A C-Media 8738 soundchip would have been a much better choice instead of this poor SiS AC97 audio stuff.

The 4SDA+ is capable of giving you access to a total of 6 USB 1.0 ports. We have two of them at the backside of the board like all other motherboards have, and EPoX has included an USB bracket with 2 extra USB 1.0 ports giving you a total of 4 USB ports to work with. The board even has pins to hook up a second bracket with yet another extra 2 USB ports to reach the limit of 6 USB 1.0 ports. Now if that isn't sweet ;)

As with most current motherboards, a Winbond chip earned its spot on this board too. The chip does nothing more than supplying temperature, voltage, and fan speed readings …

Another superb feature on many EPoX motherboards is the onboard diagnostic LED. This is great for easy troubleshooting! If your system doesn't POST, the diagnostic (or debugging) LEDs will show you a code that you can lookup in the manual showing you which piece of hardware is causing the POST problem. I can't live without this feature anymore :D

Page 3 : Layout

Layout

You might ask : Why is a layout of a motherboard important? Well, simply because a bad layout could obstruct a good airflow inside a case and lead to the fact that everything will become one big messy work of art that doesn't look like the inside of a proper computer case anymore …

At first sight, the 4SDA+ motherboard looks very 'clean'. Everything is mounted on a green PCB following the good old EPoX style.

One thing you notice the minute you try to install a P4 CPU into the socket, is that the ZIFF socket is rotated 90 degrees. The surrounding of the socket is free from capacitors, condensators, and other components. There certainly is enough space around the CPU socket to mount a big*ss air cooler or your favorite other extreme CPU cooling. Let your imagination take control :)

An important issue in a board layout is the placement of the ATX power connector. The ATX power cable that comes from the PSU shouldn't interfere with the airflow of a CPU cooler. On this board the ATX power connector is located vertically at the bottom right of the CPU socket. This means that need to get the power cable past the CPU cooler to reach the connector :( To me this is a very bad, if not the worst place to put a power connector. I prefer my power connector placed horizontally at the top right of the board. EPoX scores one bad point here.

Another interesting item to take a look at is the placement of the 3 memory slots. On our 4SDA+ they are located at the right side of the CPU socket and far enough from the socket to keep them clear from your monster heatsinks ;) However I do have to make another small remark here … The left memory slot is blocked by a videocard in the AGP slot because it's installed too close to the AGP slot. As a result of this issue, you always need to remove your videocard first before adding or removing memory to/from the left DIMM slot. By the way … Did you notice that the AGP slot has a retention clip to keep the AGP card in place? Interesting for people who attend to LAN parties a lot.

The northbridge on our 4SDA+ comes with active cooling! I've seen versions of this board with only passive cooling, but ours comes with a tiny heatsink and a Coolermaster fan. Good cooling is always important and especially when you're into overclocking! Heat is an annoying enemy … not only for a CPU, but also for every other component inside a case!

The IDE connectors and the RAID connectors are installed vertically at the middle right of the board. The standard IDE connectors are yellow while the RAID connectors have a red color. I cannot complain about this setup. The only drawback is that the floppy disk connector is located all the way at the bottom right of the board next to the debugging LEDs. Alright, I know this is not a reason why one should NOT buy this board, but still … EPoX could have found a better place.

The 4SDA+ features 3 fan headers. One at the top right of the CPU socket and two at the bottom of the board … 1 at the bottom left which is really hard to reach and 1 at the bottom right. One last thing I want to discuss about the board layout are some little DIP switches. These DIP switches allow you to manually adjust several voltage tweaks like CPU voltage and DDR voltage. Of course, you can also adjust these from within the BIOS …

Well I must say I'm quite happy with the layout of this EPoX board. There are a few flaws in the design that prevent it from being perfect, but nothing major …

Page 4 : BIOS

BIOS

The 4SDA+ comes with an Award BIOS and of course, EPoX wouldn't be EPoX if this board didn't have all the necessary tweaks & overclocking options available in the BIOS.

The most important menu in the BIOS is probably the
Frequency/Voltage Control
. The settings in this menu allow you to overclock the CPU and the memory to their limits. The CPU voltage can be adjusted from 1.400V to 1.850V in 0.025V increments. 1.85V may not look much to an AMD overclocker, but let me tell you that a P4 Northwood @ 1.85V needs some form of extreme cooling to be able to dissipate the heat and stay cool enough to run stable! The 1.85V core voltage should be more than enough to get the most out of our P4 1.6A CPU. The DDR memory voltage can be set from 2.5V (default voltage) all the way up to no less than
3.2V
! Last but not least, this EPoX board also allows you to increase the AGP voltage from 1.5V (default) to 2.2V in 0.1V increments to increase the overclocking potential of an AGP videocard. Sweet huh?! What else do we have in this menu? Well there's an Auto Detect PCI divider setting so you don't need to worry about PCI speeds being too high. And a last thing in this part of the BIOS is the FSB & FSB/RAM clock ratio setting. You can adjust the FSB speed from 100MHz to 200MHz in 1MHz jumps. Then you need to set the correct FSB/RAM clock ratio to match your memory speed. And of course, we don't see a multiplier setting because Intel hardlocks their CPUs so changing the multiplier of a P4 CPU is out of the question!

As far as the memory is concerned, the whole pack of memory tweaks is present. Not only the most important ones like CAS Latency, but also almost every other memory tweak in the book. Another good move from EPoX!

And finally we have the
Advanced AGP Control
menu which allows us to enable the AGP Fast Writes, AGP sideband addressing, AGP mode, etc.

To conclude the BIOS chat, we have to admit that a BIOS like the one on this 4SDA+ board is top-notch! An example to some other manufacturers ;)

Page 5 : Overclocking

Overclocking

We all know that a P4 1.6GHz Northwood CPU (P4 1.6A) overclocks very well! Many of them are able to run @ 2.4GHz with regular aircooling. My sample has no problem hitting that barrier either. Let the overclocking adventure begin …

The board runs just fine at the default 100MHz FSB. Heck, why shouldn't it run at that FSB speed? It's the default and official FSB speed of a SiS645 chipset ;) The next step I took was a 133MHz FSB setting and as expected, the board passed the test without any hickups! This FSB setting resulted in a CPU speed of 2.13GHz (533MHz QDR) without having to increase the core voltage of the P4 or even the DDR voltage. By the way … we're using Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM in our test system so a memory speed of 166MHz (333MHz DDR) can be obtained without having to increase the DDR voltage. Now it's time to search the limits of our EPoX board!

After a couple hours of experimenting with the FSB speeds, the core voltage and the memory timings and voltage, I was able to run the P4 1.6A CPU stable at 2.32GHz with a FSB of 145MHz and a memory speed of 180MHz (360MHz DDR) (FSB/RAM ratio : 4/5). Now isn't that a sweet overclock for a chipset that doesn't officially support a 133MHZ (533MHz QDR) FSB?! This means that you can easily use this board to plug in one of those new Pentium 4 CPUs that use a 133MHz (533MHz QDR) FSB by default! I'd like to note that a FSB of 147MHz did run fairly stable on our sample board, but I had a feeling that these extra 2MHz pushed the board just a little bit to hard! That's why I chose to take the 145MHz FSB as the board's limit. A 145MHz FSB (580MHz QDR) and to ability to run our P4 1.6A @ +2.3GHz still is quite an achievement on a SiS645 based motherboard!

Page 6 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Test System :

- Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Northwood CPU
- EPoX 4SDA+ (SiS645) Mainboard
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM
- Visiontek GeForce3 videocard
- Maxtor 60GB ATA133 7200rpm hard drive
- WinXP + latest drivers (SiS AGP 1.10)
- Detonator 29.42

Sisoft Sandra 2002 Pro

3DMARK2001 SE

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Demo001

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Torture Demo

Page 7 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Good

- Overclocking
- BIOS tweaks!
- Onboard RAID
- Active northbridge cooling
- Debugging LEDs

Bad

- ATX power connector & floppy disk connector in a bad place
- 1 fan header is hard to reach
- Onboard audio quality is very poor

With the 4SDA+, EPoX has done a mighty fine job. The SiS645 chipset again proves to be a very stable and fully-featured chipset that is capable of performing really good. Really, the SiS645 with the DDR333 support has managed to amaze me in many ways. The 4SDA+ didn't give us one single lockup or random crash during our benchmarks, not even when the test system was overclocked! If you combine the stability and reliability of this board with the tweaking options in the BIOS, the 4SDA+ is clearly one hell of a board to consider if you are a tweaker and overclocking enthusiast! It may not let you make a world record overclock, but the DDR333 and the tweaks allow the 4SDA+ to perform on par with some of the most popular Intel-based boards on the market. Apart from a few flaws in the board layout, this board might just be the perfect solution for all you guys who want a good solid Pentium 4 platform with lots of tweaking options, DDR333 support and an acceptable pricetag … And remember that the price will drop a lot on a very short basis because the SiS648 chipset is on its way …