Since the release of the AMD Athlon64 processor, there have been countless reviews posted here at Legion Hardware based on supportive motherboards. Major manufacturers such as ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, Soltek and even EPoX were all quick to offer motherboards for this new processor range. Surprisingly, one of the more respected motherboard manufacturers by enthusiasts has had very little to offer in the way of 939-pin solutions. Thats right, I am talking about EPoX. Until recently they have had just two motherboards on offer, both were based on the nForce3 chipset series.

Originally, EPoX was surprisingly slow in delivering NVIDIA based solutions to the market, sticking primarily with VIA based products. However, this has all changed with the 939-pin platform as EPoX does not feature a single VIA solution. Rather EPoX now offers a total of five NVIDIA based 939-pin motherboards. The latest of these motherboards are all built around the new nForce4 chipsets. While EPoX does offer an nForce4 SLI solution, todays sample is built around the more humble nForce4 Ultra chipset. Known as the 9NPA+ Ultra, this is one of the most affordable AMD64 939-pin PCI Express motherboards yet.

The typical nForce4 SLI motherboard will retail anywhere from $200 US up to $300 US. This is opposed to K8T890 motherboards which can be had for as low as $100~$150 US. However, NVIDIA does of course have a more affordable nForce4 solution known as the Ultra. The nForce4 Ultra is identical to the SLI version in every way, but of course there is no SLI support. Given that the majority of users out there are not all that interested in SLI, the nForce4 Ultra is an ideal product for the mainstream market.

However, as is often the case with high-end/low-end chipsets that are much the same, there are ways to alter the low-end chipset to make it work just as the high-end chipset does. This was the case with the i865PE and i975P, the latter was the much more expensive high-end version. Motherboard manufacturers found a way to make the cheaper i865PE chipset as fast as the more expensive version by enabling a special memory controller function that was original exclusive to the i875P. Recently, motherboard manufacturer DFI exposed the nForce4 Ultras ability to be modified in order to support SLI technology.

Unfortunately, although this modification can be done, it does require the nForce4 Ultra motherboard to support dual PCI Express x16 ports. Since the DFI nForce4 SLI and Ultra motherboards share the same PCB design, this was possible. However, EPoX have given their nForce4 SLI and Ultra motherboards completely different PCB designs. This means the nForce4 Ultra modification to enabled SLI mode will not be possible on this motherboard as there are not two PCIe 16x slots. Nevertheless, the EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra is an extremely cheap nForce4 Ultra motherboard that should offer excellent performance.