epox 4g4a+ - p4

Approx Price: $100USD

MFG Link: Epox 4G4A+ Northbridge Intel i845G Southbridge Intel ICH4 Supported FSB 100/133 MHz Form Factor ATX DIMM Slots Three PC1600/2100 Max Memory 3 GB Integrated video Yes, Intel i845G Shared Video memory 1,8MB IDE 2 Ultra/100, 2 ltra/133 AGP 4x AGP, 1.5V Lock PCI 6 32bit PCI's ISA None CNR/AMR/ACR 1 CNR LAN 10/100 Realtek 8100B Audio Realtek ALC650 5.1 C'97 USB 6 USB 2.0 Power Supply Standard ATX Misc 2 Serial, 1 Parallel, WoL

The second of two Epox motherboards was the 4G4A+. Based on the i845G chipset this board is compatible with all P4 CPU's out there.

Unlike most other Pentium 4 boards the socket has been tilted 90 degrees to the right. This saves quite a bit of space and allows Epox to fit six PCI's onto their motherboard.

The layout of the motherboard is very good, with very few complaints. One thing that we noticed was that the Epox P4 boards only need standard ATX power supplies rather then require Pentium 4 compatible ones.

The 4G4A+ is tied with the 4GLA+ as the most feature rich motherboard out in the roundup. Three DIMM slots, six PCI's, a 4x AGP (1.5V Lock), onboard LAN, onboard IDE RAID, USB 2.0 and onboard 5.1 audio! Very impressive, but the level of integration and expandability comes with a rather steep price.

The 4G4A+ was the second highest priced board, retailing for about $200 CDN.

Populating all three DIMM slots with double sided memory was quite an adventure itself. Using three DIMM's caused data errors while booting up WindowsXP. We were surprised that the board POSTed properly with the memory but it's a shame that it didn't work properly after.

The Epox board was impressive on the expandability scale and kept a high level of integration all the same. The 4G4A+ is a great board and personally I'd love to use it myself, but it may have too much, and too high a price to compete with the other integrated motherboards in this roundup despite the performance gain.