EPoX EP-5P945 PRO: Budget 945P Performance
by Gary Key on September 11, 2006 4:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Thoughts
The EPoX EP-5P945 PRO is a very affordable performance budget board for the Intel market that provides an excellent feature set for around US $90. The performance of the board in the majority of the synthetic and game benchmarks was near class leading the majority of time. This is very good for EPoX as our ASRock based 945P board did not perform as well in testing. The stability of the board was excellent in all areas of testing and general usage. With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.
In the video area, the inclusion of a secondary PCI-E X16 slot provides for multi-monitor capability. This X16 slot will operate in X1 mode unless the two X1 PCI Express slots are disabled for X4 PCI Express capability. We had no issues utilizing two 7600GS cards for multi-monitor usage. With this setup the primary PCI-E X16 slot continues to operate in full X16 mode with the secondary video card installed.
In the performance area, the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO generated consistent and competitive benchmark scores in our gaming, general application, and synthetic tests. The stability of the board was at all times excellent during testing. Outside of performance, there are a few issues worth noting.
We did not care for the location of the 24-pin and 4-pin ATX connectors near the CPU socket due to cabling issues over our CPU heatsink/fan unit. Also, the MCH heatsink is located too close to the CPU socket. However, due to the limited overclocking ability of the Intel 945P chipset we can forgive this error, especially if the user has installed a Core 2 Duo processor. At a final 319FSB setting during overclocking with our E6300 CPU we found the board to be very stable but could not reach a higher FSB setting. In fact, by increasing our memory ratio to 4:5 during overclocking we could only reach a stable 307FSB. We recommend staying with a 1:1 ratio and purchasing low latency DDR2-533 memory for this board and others in the budget category.
Overall, the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO offers a very affordable and extremely stable platform for Intel's latest processor family. The ability of the board to use a secondary PCI Express video card in X4 capability allows those who need multi-monitor capability a unique budget option. The EPoX board is not the first choice for the computer enthusiast due to limited overclocking and memory speeds. However, it would make an excellent system for those on a limited budget looking to use an E6300 or E6400 Core 2 Duo. The inclusion of two PCI Express X1 slots and three PCI slots means this board is also very expandable. We found that while the Intel 945P chipset is not as feature laden as other chipsets it is still competitive a year after being on the market. Our opinion of the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO is the same as the Intel 945P: it may not be the sexiest offering on the market but it simply works and works quite well.
The EPoX EP-5P945 PRO is a very affordable performance budget board for the Intel market that provides an excellent feature set for around US $90. The performance of the board in the majority of the synthetic and game benchmarks was near class leading the majority of time. This is very good for EPoX as our ASRock based 945P board did not perform as well in testing. The stability of the board was excellent in all areas of testing and general usage. With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.
In the video area, the inclusion of a secondary PCI-E X16 slot provides for multi-monitor capability. This X16 slot will operate in X1 mode unless the two X1 PCI Express slots are disabled for X4 PCI Express capability. We had no issues utilizing two 7600GS cards for multi-monitor usage. With this setup the primary PCI-E X16 slot continues to operate in full X16 mode with the secondary video card installed.
In the performance area, the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO generated consistent and competitive benchmark scores in our gaming, general application, and synthetic tests. The stability of the board was at all times excellent during testing. Outside of performance, there are a few issues worth noting.
We did not care for the location of the 24-pin and 4-pin ATX connectors near the CPU socket due to cabling issues over our CPU heatsink/fan unit. Also, the MCH heatsink is located too close to the CPU socket. However, due to the limited overclocking ability of the Intel 945P chipset we can forgive this error, especially if the user has installed a Core 2 Duo processor. At a final 319FSB setting during overclocking with our E6300 CPU we found the board to be very stable but could not reach a higher FSB setting. In fact, by increasing our memory ratio to 4:5 during overclocking we could only reach a stable 307FSB. We recommend staying with a 1:1 ratio and purchasing low latency DDR2-533 memory for this board and others in the budget category.
Overall, the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO offers a very affordable and extremely stable platform for Intel's latest processor family. The ability of the board to use a secondary PCI Express video card in X4 capability allows those who need multi-monitor capability a unique budget option. The EPoX board is not the first choice for the computer enthusiast due to limited overclocking and memory speeds. However, it would make an excellent system for those on a limited budget looking to use an E6300 or E6400 Core 2 Duo. The inclusion of two PCI Express X1 slots and three PCI slots means this board is also very expandable. We found that while the Intel 945P chipset is not as feature laden as other chipsets it is still competitive a year after being on the market. Our opinion of the EPoX EP-5P945 PRO is the same as the Intel 945P: it may not be the sexiest offering on the market but it simply works and works quite well.
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23 Comments
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Zoomer - Monday, September 18, 2006 - link
While anandtech regularly bashes ATi/nVidia for paper launches, wouldn't this be a paper launch too? I can't find it for sale on the egg nor any other site.Gary Key - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - link
I have contacted EPOX about supply, we purchased a retail board from NewEgg for comparison but according to our sources they do not have a firm delivery date so the board was pulled until an ETA is available.
Stele - Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - link
By the way, another noteworthy point of this review is the superb photography used. The level of detail and focus are excellent, and furthermore there is sufficient, white ambient lighting used so that the board isn't covered in off-colour shadows as if it were photographed under a sofa in the evening or something....While some people would dismiss the quality of motherboard photography as a non-issue, for some of us it's important to be able to see up close and gauge at least the layout of various components, connectors etc (better still if we could even see the details of certain components, as was very much the case in this review) without having to actually find a real sample of the board.
Stele - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - link
Good review, as can be expected from Anandtech :)However, I would just like to point out a little misnomer that's becoming distressingly popular on the web... those little bare-metal capacitors are not called "solid state capacitors". They are, in fact, just aluminium electrolytic capacitors. The difference is that generally, the electrolyte used is of a solid type, rather than the liquid electrolyte the 'traditional' aluminium electrolytic capacitors contain.
Hence, if you want to differentiate them from the 'traditional' electrolytic capacitors, you could perhaps call them 'solid electrolytic capacitors' but certainly not 'solid state'... that is an old term used to describe circuits that do not use vacuum tubes, during the advent of transistors.
yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - link
Suface mount, according to an EE buddy of mine.Stele - Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - link
I agree with him perfectly. As much as he's right if he were to call the components in question 'capacitors'. :)
Surface mount just means it's soldered onto the surface of the motherboard's PCB rather than using the traditional thin 'legs' that poke through holes in the PCB (such a component and mounting technology are called 'through-hole'). As such, while surface mount is an accurate description of the capacitors, it describes another aspect of the components in question altogether :)
However, because it is an accurate description nevertheless, calling these capacitors 'surface mount' is therefore actually more accurate than calling them 'solid state' ;) Yet the point reviewers are trying to make is not so much that the capacitors are surface-mount, but that they are not the traditional liquid electrolytic type that are more prone to leakage and failure under prolonged exposure to harsh operating evironments (thermally and electrically). Hence, the focus is more on the electrolyte type - solid vs. liquid - rather than surface-mount vs. through-hole.
blckgrffn - Monday, September 11, 2006 - link
I appreciate this timely review. I was trying to decide whether the GF was a getting a x2 or a Core Duo, and this board is going to solve my dillema.If only they had stuck the ICH7R or even just a 2 or 4 port SATA raid controller on there, as the lack of raid is really bogus now. A lot of my customers/friends want RAID1 for redundancy. I know this can be done in software, but hardware raid is much more transparent.
This board would be a no brainer if it included RAID.
Thanks again,
Nat
yyrkoon - Monday, September 11, 2006 - link
Well, of course I cannot speak for you, or anyone else, but in my opinion, RAID 1 is a bad idea for anyone who is likely to muck up a system. I find that non RAID (possibly USB drive backups, or whatever else you preffer), are often better, and have greater flexability. Another thing to note, is that if Windows isnt nessisary, Linux / BSD RAID 0,RAID 1 is nearly, if not just as fast as Hardware RAID. Also, incremental ghosting of a system drive is another option which is much more flexable.Basicly, the only real reason for RAID 1, is in the event of hardware failure, and if you purchase with this in mind, there is no reason why a HDD cant live for 5-8 years easily.
blckgrffn - Monday, September 11, 2006 - link
Try telling users with 100's of gigs of photos or videos that there HD should have lasted 5 years, not 5 months. I have already been there and it isn't comfortable. There is a reason dell is offering RAID 1 on nearly every desktop model they have. It's the easiest, most transparent way to send your MTBF into the stratosphere.Second, my $80 EVGA SLI mobo has all those features, as do many AMD catered motherboards. In the past, Intel boards have also come down to reasonable levels.
I stoutly refuse to spend more on a mobo than a processor, sorry. And I am not paying $150 for a board that has been gutted of features expected of a high to medium end motherboard.
Nat
yyrkoon - Monday, September 11, 2006 - link
And yes, we run a PC buisness here also, and have yet to see a HDD reguardless of how bad off, that we couldnt pull the data off. Most of the time, you just put the drive in another machine, pull the data off, and thats that. Once in a blue moon you have to send the drive off to have a company equiped with the hardware to get at the data, but that is extremely rare. RAID 1 wont work for an accidental deletion, and the like, thats where its the buisness owners responcability to educate average PC users for each situation, and not just try to make a quick 10%-15%(on a HDD) by selling another drive.