Doom 3 is
the most advanced game to date. it takes advantage of the latest videocard
technology and pushes the processing power of the CPU to its absolute limit. At
its highest setting, Ultra quality, texture sizes pass the 500MB mark which
means even tomorrow's videocards will have a hard time running everything. The
frame rates in the game itself are locked at 60 fps so anything above that point
is wasted. Each test is run three times with the third run being
recorded.
| Doom3 |
| LQ 640x480: |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 (955X 200/667) |
96.9 |
   |
| Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 (945P 200/667) |
94.3 |
|
| MSI P4N Diamond (NF4 SLI 200/800 7800GTX
Single) |
97.3 |
|
| MSI P4N Diamond (NF4 SLI 200/800 7800GTX SLI) |
96.2 |
|
| Epox 5NVA+ SLI (NF4 SLI 200/800 7800GTX
Single) |
96.2 |
   |
| Epox 5NVA+ SLI (NF4 SLI 200/800 7800GTX SLI) |
94.4 |
|
Doom 3 framerates are good overall and all systems are
close to the 100fps barrier. I am rather surprised that SLI reduces performance
since this game is usually very nVIDIA friendly.
A very nice board
overall!
The main reason why I enjoy playing
with computers so much is that the landscape is always changing. Those of you
(like me) who thought Intel was untouchable in the chipset market had better
rethink that opinion. nVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset is fast, packed
full of features like SLI that Intel does not currently support, and is
overclocker friendly.
Boards like the Epox 5NVA+ SLI which support pretty much
every Socket 775 processor on the market today, from 533/800/1066 MHz FSB
Pentium 4/D/Extreme Edition and Celeron D processors. Even an impressive 8GB of
DDR2 system memory! The board is a bit light with onboard devices, only sporting
Gigabit LAN, IEEE 1394a and 7.1 audio however its two open PCI Express x1 (three
if you count the second PCI E x16 slot when running a single videocard) and two
PCI slots should give users ample room for expansion.
In terms of performance the Epox 5NVA+ SLI often
competed for top spot against Intel's 955X and 945P based motherboards and often
came out on top. The system was particularly fast in SYSmark 2004 as well as the
PCMark series, if you are doing something HDD intensive, a nForce4 powered
motherboard is an excellent choice.
The Epox 5NVA+ SLI was also a decent overclocker so those
of you who like to push your systems to the limit will be pleased. Epox does not
allow for hardcore voltages but I was still able to push my board up to 247 MHz
FSB, I thought that is a decent speed considering I'm on air cooling.
With a retail price $235 CDN ($199 US) that falls well
within the premium category, the Epox 5NVA+ SLI motherboard is a real high
performance alternative to Intel core logic based solutions.
Find out
about this and many other reviews by joining the Weekly PCstats.com
Newsletter today! Catch all of PCstats latest hardware reviews right
here.
Related Articles
Here are a
few other articles that you might enjoy as well...
1. Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 Intel 955X Motherboard Review
2. Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal Intel 955X Motherboard Review
3. Gigabyte GA-8I945P Pro Intel 945P Motherboard Review
4. ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid Intel/AMD Motherboard Review
5. MSI 661FM3-V Motherboard Review
Doom
3
RSS Newsletter
