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.
In the
demo001, we can certainly see the 4SDA5+ flex its muscles!
Conclusions on the 4SDA5+
from Epox:
Well, the Epox 4SDA5+ certainly wasn't a disappointing motherboard. With a retail price of $180
CDN ($105 US) the 4SDA5+ is pretty price competitive as well (to Intel chipset based
systems).
More importantly, the SiS 648 chipset proved it could also perform well
in the benchmarks. The chipset often performed on par with i845PE based motherboards. In terms
of overclocking potential, we were amazed that the 4SDA5+ was actually able to 160 MHz FSB.... most
other SiS 648 based boards have a really hard time even cracking 150 MHz
FSB.
The Epox 4SDA5+ features on board IDE RAID, 5.1
AC'97 audio, a 10/100 NIC, IEEE 1394, USB 2.0, 8x AGP, six PCI's and
three DIMM slots. The board unofficially supports PC3200 memory. With a passive heatsink on the SiS 963
southbridge, Epox seem to be preparing this system for some extra duity. That
little heatsink is a good addition as the northbridge did get fairly hot during
our testing phases.
Epox should have really included Serial ATA with
the 4SDA5+ since many other motherboards in its class have that new and
emerging technology. While 5.1 channel sounds nice in the marketing sheets,
I really have to
whish the CPU sapping AC'97 codec would be dropped in favor of the C-Media 8738 chipset as
the de facto standard for integrated sound.
On the tweaking level, it would have been nice to be
able to set the AGP/PCI frequencies. Most users won't give this a passing
though though, so this won't make much of a difference unless you are
a dedicated benchmarking nut. Overall the Epox 4SDA5+ is a pretty good board and, one that would make the
good foundation for anyone building a new P4 system as long as they don't intend to
adopt Serial ATA anytime soon.
Related Articles:
Here are a few other articles that you might enjoy
as well...
1. ABIT SR7-8X SiS648 Motherboard
2. MSI 648 MAX-F Motherboard
Quake III Arena
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