Mobo Tsunami! 24 Boards with the 865/875P Chipset

Epox PE-4PDA2+: Better Than Its Big Brother

Intel 865PE Chipset
Board Revision 1.0
BIOS (06/11/2003)

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The Epox PE-4PDA2+ is delivered in packaging similar to that of the PE-4PCA3+ with Canterwood chipset (Intel 875P), but is based on the Intel 865PE chipset. The product comes with numerous manuals, diskettes, round IDE cables, a game port and FireWire panel. Epox saves money and only includes a Serial-ATA cable complete with adapter for the voltage supply.

Compared to the PE-4PCA3+ with 875P chipset, the "mini model" has more equipment features. These include an additional RAID controller from Silicon Image (Sil 3112A) and a FireWire controller from Agere (FW323-06). That means that three FireWire ports are available on the board - although Epox only takes two connections to the outside by cable.

As opposed to its big brother, the manufacturer equips this board with the Highpoint controller PT372N, which is exclusively responsible for four ATA/133 devices. In view of the many onboard components (ATA/133 RAID, Serial RAID and FireWire), the bandwidth of the data bus, theoretically 266 MB/s, is quickly overloaded between Southbridge and Northbridge. This leads us to question why Epox nevertheless integrates another Gigabit LAN chip (Broadcom), which also puts a stress of up to 125 MB/s on the Southbridge data traffic, without CSA technology.

Chips for components.

Gigabit LAN with PCI connection.