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Introduction
Intel's
Pentium 4 processors seemed to have a hard time
selling at first because of the lack of choices
for its chipsets. People who use Intel processors
would generally want an Intel-based board to go
with them. At first, there was only the i850 +
RDRAM combination which proved to be a very fast
and stable solution but was pretty expensive.
Intel wanted to bring the Pentium 4 to the masses
by making a PC133 chipset which was the i845.
But the i845 proved to be the worst thing that
the Pentium 4 could have since its architecture
required a high memory bandwidth...the i845 only
provided a measly 1.05GB/sec peak bandwidth. DDR
chipsets from VIA and SiS proved to be a threat
to Intel because of the price difference between
DDR-based chipsets and Intel's own i850. Intel
released, for the first time their DDR chipset
for the Pentium 4 which is basically a DDR version
of the i845. It was called i845D. Benchmarks showed
that the i845D could keep up with the i850 and
VIA's and SiS' offerings. Add that to the reliability
of Intel chipsets and Intel once again had things
going well for them. Many board makers started
making boards based on the i845D chipset and it
did prove to be a very good and reliable solution.
Epox's
845D: 4BDA
Like
Abit, Asus and MSI, Epox is also experimenting
on their products by providing a pretty versatile
lineup, composed of different variations of different
chipsets. The 4BDA can probably be described as
very straightforward motherboard. It only carries
with it the bare essentials but does have some
pretty good punch in it.
In
typical Epox-style, the board comes in the army
green color. One thing worth mentioning is the
very nice box that Epox made for the 4BDA. First
glance, the board has a neat layout and provides
ample space for the different peripherals. The
4BDA only has 2 DDR DIMM slots but this follows
Intel's reference design for the 845D. 6 PCI slots
are no longer new today and Epox threw in a CNR
slot. The common problem with most motherboards
is the space from the DDR DIMM slot and the AGP
slot but it's a good thing that the AGP slot is
spaced away nicely from the DDR DIMM slots. The
northbridge is cooled by a small green heatsink
which resembles those used on most 440BX motherboards.
The
northbridge heatsink is small but it is good enough
to keep the whole system stable and running. As
seen at the picture at the right, there's not
much problem with the layout. The ATX power connector
might cause some problems since it may need to
go over the fan of the heatsink.
Like
most Epox boards, the 4BDA has a RAID version
which can be seen from the layout. There are traces
for an onboard RAID chip as well as traces for
additional IDE ports. The board lacks Epox's usual
onboard debugger which does help in diagnosing
the board when there are some problems. Overall,
the layout is very nice but as always, does have
a flaw at least. The flaw is minor though and
won't really pose a problem.
Test
System |
