3DMark2001 SE	Source: MadOnion

3DMark2001 SE is the latest installment in the 3DMark series by MadOnion. By combining DirectX8 support with completely new graphics, it continues to provide good overall system benchmarks. 3DMark2001 SE has been created in cooperation with the major 3D accelerator and processor manufacturers to provide a reliable set of diagnostic tools. The suite demonstrates 3D gaming performance by using real-world gaming technology to test a system's true performance abilities. Tests include: DirectX8 Vertex Shaders, Pixel Shaders and Point Sprites, DOT3 and Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, support for Full Scene Anti-aliasing and Texture Compression and two game tests using Ipion real-time physics. Higher 3DMark scores denote better performance.

3DMark 2001 SE Benchmark Results
	Motherboards	3DMarks	Ranking
1.	4SDA+ - 100 MHz FSB	7827
2.	4SDA+ - 115 MHz FSB	8451
3.	P4PA - 100 MHz FSB	7791
4.	4D845A - 100 MHz FSB	7723

In 3DMark2001 we can see the benefit of the added memory bandwidth, the stock scores for the EP-4SDA+ are the highest yet. Overclocking produces some very nice numbers for a P4/DDR/GeForce3 Ti500 setup.

Quake III Arena	Source: ID Software

Quake III Arena is a First Person Shooter (FPS) that revolutionized gaming as we know it. Using multiple light sources and having graphics textures that can fill videocards, even after 3 years it's still able to bring a cutting edge system to its knees.

Quake III Arena Fastest demo001
	Motherboard	FPS	Ranking
1.	4SDA+ - 100 MHz	283.2
2.	4SDA+ - 115 MHz	309.5
3.	P4PA - 100 MHz	282.8
4.	4D845A - 100 MHz	261.1

Quake III Arena Fastest nv15demo
	Motherboard	FPS	Ranking
1.	4SDA+ - 100 MHz	76.7
2.	4SDA+ - 115 MHz	82.4
3.	P4PA - 100 MHz	76.3
4.	4D845A - 100 MHz	73

With the fastest settings enabled, the EP-4SDA+ simply chews out everything Quake III throws at it. Quake III is starting to loose its usefulness as a benchmark and we're probably not going to use it from now on.

Quake III Arena MAX 1024x768 demo001
	Motherboard	FPS	Ranking
1.	4SDA+ - 100 MHz	193.6
2.	4SDA+ - 111 MHz	205.7
3.	P4PA - 100 MHz	187.3
4.	4D845A - 100 MHz	186.3

Quake III Arena MAX 1024x768 nv15demo
	Motherboard	FPS	Ranking
1.	4SDA+ - 100 MHz	52.4
2.	4SDA+ - 111 MHz	55.4
3.	P4PA - 100 MHz	52.2
4.	4D845A - 100 MHz	49.6

At 1024x768 we start to see the differences shrink as the videocard starts becoming the bottleneck. Still at stock speeds, the 4SDA+ has very comfortable lead.

Conclusions on the EP-4SDA

It's nice to see that Epox is not too shy to take chances on technology. Using the SiS 645 chipset on the EP-4SDA+ has made it one of the fastest P4 motherboards we've tested to date. Stability was excellent, and there were zero BSOD's during testing - even when all 3 DIMM slots were occupied with double sided DDR RAM.

The performance of the EP-4SDA speaks for itself, even at stock speeds, and the Epox 4SDA+ didn't shy away from our overclocking adventures. Being able to push the CPU 100 MHz higher (2.3 GHz) then any board before it is quite a feat especially considering we're using a Williamette Pentium 4 processor.

The Epox EP-4SDA+ is a fairly future friendly motherboard with three DIMM slots and six bus mastering PCI's you can easily swap out the components you don't want. With onboard ATA1333 IDE RAID compliments of the Highpoint HPT372 chipset the only other thing we would have really liked to have seen was USB2.0 support. MSI in particular have been really good about packing all their lastest mainboards with that special little NEC chipset. Perhaps Epox will include this feature in future releases.. From a gamers perspective, it would have been nice to see a more robust onboard audio solution used though, the AC'97 codec just doesn't cut it in my books.

Lastly, and most importantly, this board is pretty well priced. Weighing in at only $160 CDN, it's one of the least expensive Pentium 4 motherboards out there and it's just totally packed with features! You can't go wrong if you pick up the EP-4SDA!