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The System

For the test machine, I used what I thought would be a "standard" setup for someone purchasing this board. This is the same setup that I use in my own workstation. In fact, this exact system was used as my main workstation for the time that I had with the board.

• Windows 2000 Pro (Retail) with SP1
• Epox EP-D3VA Motherboard (Latest BIOS installed)
• 2x PIII 667EB's (cB0 stepping) FCPGA
• 2x 128mb Crucial SDRam PC133 (2-2-2)
• Power Color GeForce2 GTS 32mb DDR
• 3dfx VOODOOtv 200 PCI (Don't ask :-)
• SoundBlaster Live! MP3+ 5.1
• 2x 3Com 3C905B-TX 10/100 NICs
• 2x IBM Dekstar 34GXP 20gb 7200rpm ATA66 drives (level 0 RAID on the HPT370)
• Toshiba 12x DVDRom
• Sony 4x6x24 CDRW
• 2x Alpha PAL2035's with HO Sunon 60mm fans (from 2CoolTek)
• LiteOn FS020 case with 300W power supply (from OutsideLoop)
• All of the latest drivers available at the time of testing were installed

The Numbers Man! The Numbers!

Benchmarks consist of the standard regime as well. Until we get some *real* benchmarks for an SMP system, Sisoft Sandra and CliBench MKIII SMP are the go-to guys. I will note that we have started using the newest version of Sandra (2001) here at 2CPU.com. I am not exactly sure what has changed so I didn't include any comparison benchmarks from another system (for the Sandra scores). After talking with the people at Sisoft, I was afraid that the results might not be completely accurate. So anyway, let's get it on...

Here we can see the dual 667's and EP-D3VA hanging right in there. The PIII (Coppermine)
Xeon is nothing more than a glorified PIII with a different package, so this all looks to be in order.

Again... Everything is right where we would expect it.

Here is where the VIA chipset chokes. Memory bandwidth. While these number may
look pretty ugly in comparison to the Sisoft reference systems, the EP-D3VA falls short
of the numbers presented by the WPCRSET "tweaked" 694D as well. There are two
things we need to remember here though: 1. I only applied the memory tweaks available
in the BIOS, and, 2. We are comparing Sandra 2000 with Sandra 2001. I am positive
that more bandwidth could be tweaked out of this board with the use of something like WPCRSET.

I wanted to be sure to include the CliBench scores so we could see exactly where we stand on
memory performance. For the sake of comparison, lets look at the same benchmark on the
venerable BX based Tyan Tiger 100 ("other computer") with a pair of PIII 600E's. While I am the
first to admit that this is an apples to oranges type of comparison, at least we can get an estimate
of where we stand. Again, these numbers can only improve with more tweaking, but I wanted to give
an accurate "out of the box" image.

Ooooo... RAID!

No review of this motherboard could be considered complete without talking about the onboard RAID. I'll admit it. After all of the horror stories from BP6 users all over the world about the poor drivers and disk incompatibilities of the HPT366 controller, I was skeptical. All of my reservations vanished after a few days with the HPT370 RAID on this motherboard. I can honestly say that I did not experience one single problem with the controller during the install or use of this machine. I was actually impressed by the speed and "snappy" feel that it gave my everyday work. Now obviously I cannot test the controller with every brand of hard drive, but with careful selection of components, this thing is a screamer! Here... I'll prove it!

Ummm... WOW! That is fast!

Again, the numbers speak for themselves.

Final Thoughts

• Pros
  Nice layout
  Solid as a rock!
  Adjustable FSB speeds
  4-way Interleaving in the BIOS (Yeah!)
  Onboard IDE RAID (and no onboard sound)
• Cons
  No voltage tweaks
  Needs a bit more tweaking to bring up the memory bandwidth
  Hmmm... I have to send it back to Epox?

Well, what can I really say that I haven't said. I really liked this motherboard. As far as features for the price, this bad-boy packs it in. A reasonably priced dual board with better than average performance and a few perks (IDE RAID) thrown in... What's not to like? If you are a mild tweaker/overclocker, I would recommend this board wholeheartedly as a solid base for your next system. Serving up for a SOHO network? No problem there either. Whether I was encoding a DiVX, messing with 1.5gb WAV files, playing games, or just idling on IRC and crunching RC5, this board was completely rock solid for me for weeks, no matter what I threw at it. This board worked very well for me as a workstation platform. As a matter of fact, if I didn't have to send it back to Epox (My review period is over), I think the EP-D3VA would've found a permanent home here with me.

Unfortunately, as I find myself saying more and more these days, serious overclockers should probably look elsewhere. While Epox has seen fit to include some user adjustable FSB settings, let's face it, dual processor systems were never designed to be overclocked and water cooled (although that is cool too ;-), and with a lack of voltage adjustments, this is not a board for those of you who have to wring every last mhz from your CPU's.

2CPU.com gives this motherboard a 4/5 CPU's

Micah Schmidt (Hooz)