Thoughts
Both NVIDIA and VIA were quick, some say too quick, to release chipsets based around AMD's Athlon 64 Model 3xxx CPUs. NVIDIA's nForce3 150, in particular, was lambasted for lacking many of the features inherent in the older nForce2 design. How, we said, could a company release a supposedly better product with far fewer features?.It's been some time in coming but NVIDIA's all-new nForce3 250(Gb) is being earnestly rolled out by motherboard manufacturers. EPoX is one of the very first with its 8KDA3+. EPoX has dutifully followed NVIDIA's reference lead by implementing a beefed-up HyperTransport link, on-chip SATA, RAIDable PATA, on-chip GbE (albeit via a transceiver), and a hardware firewall. EPoX has then taken an individual design turn by adding in a PCI-based 4-port SATA controller from Silicon Image and decent 7.1 sound, run off AC'97, from Realtek. That's all well and fine, yet FireWire has been left completely out of the equation. If it was up to us, we'd dispatch the 4-port controller and add in FireWire; there's already plenty of storage in the 250Gb design.
Stock performance was sharp. Unfortunately, we couldn't test the board's limits due to the inability to change multipliers. The next avenue of interest was packaging and software. EPoX does well on both counts. There's bountiful coloured cabling that's only let down by a standard grey floppy cable. Numerous little EPoX-specific programs add weight to the software bundle.
The nForce3 250Gb is a step forward for Socket-754, albeit one that's taken 6 months. EPoX has done a decent job with the 8KDA3+. The lack of FireWire and working multiplier support (on this very sample, something that shouldn't affect all shipping boards) is a worry, although the latter can be rectified via a new BIOS. Too many small niggles preclude it from attaining must-have status, but we reckon it's still above average. Preliminary pricing puts it at around the £100 mark.
