nForce2 6-way Motherboard Roundup - December 2002

Epox 8RDA+: Stress Testing

The abundant array of divider options available in the 8RDA+ BIOS allowed us to test this board in several different areas and configurations, including:

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results

We were pleased (but not surprised) that the Epox 8RDA+ was able to handle such a high FSB with such exceptional stability. At 194MHz FSB, 24 hours straight of Prime95 torture tests was not able to bring the 8RDA+ to its knees. Running Prime95 is a great way to really stress your system, as we have very rarely encountered an issue with a system that was able to pass 24 hours or more of Prime95 torture tests. As Prime95 was running in the background, we reran our gaming suite as well as everyday apps like Word and Excel in addition some data compression here and there. We also managed to rerun SPECviewperf and XMPEG, and added in Sciencemark stress tests (even though we didn't include any Sciencemark numbers in this review). In the end, the 8RDA+ was able to easily pass all these stress tests at 194MHz FSB. Anything over 194MHz FSB did not sufficiently meet our stress testing requirements.

Memory Stress Test Results

Lets see how well the Epox 8RDA+ is able to handle three memory modules installed and running at 333MHz DDR. Here were the timings we were able to achieve:

These are great timings (in fact the A7N8X was able to achieve the exact timings in this exact same scenario). There shouldn't be a single user out there that isn't satisfied with these aggressive timings. We must again note the lower Precharge to Active setting, which other motherboards (not based on the nForce2 chipset) either cannot achieve or simply don't have the option of running at. Also, remember that these timings were achieved with the CPU Interface enabled, which boosts performance a bit.

This final memory test demonstrates the highest frequency the Epox 8RDA+ is able to handle with three memory modules at CAS2/2T/4T/2T. Here were our results:

While we weren't able to hit 400MHz, we did get to 390MHz. With timings like CAS2/2T/4T/2T, we certainly have nothing to complain about. Keep in mind though, if you want the best performance at DDR390 you need to run your FSB at 195MHz, or 390MHz DDR. We were able to reach 194MHz, so that's pretty close to what the 8RDA+'s potential clock frequency ceiling is with all memory banks filled.

The memory overclocking score for the 8RDA+ turned out to be about the average out of all the nForce2 motherboards tested.

We had to ensure the various memory timings and frequencies we were able to operate at were fully stable. Therefore, we conducted 24 hours of Prime95 torture tests, ran various Super Pi stress tests, and reran various benchmarks like SPECviewperf 7.0 and XMPEG. All in all, we didn't encounter any issues with any of the listed memory timings and frequencies we were able to reach during these stress tests.

SoundStorm Stress Test Results

We ran the same sound tests on the 8RDA+ as we did with all the other nForce2 motherboards tested here today. The following demos were run with SoundStorm sound enabled:

There have been some minor, ongoing issues with NVIDIA's nForce1 APU drivers since the nForce1's introduction last year. Some users have experienced a Blue Screen of Death with nForce sound enabled in certain games. However, the latest nForce2 unified driver package (v 2.00) has seemingly fixed the sound issues that nForce1 users were experiencing. This is backed up by our own test results, which show that SoundStorm is able to smoothly play five of some of the most popular games out there.