Being one of the first to deliver a 6100-430 board, EPoX has put in effort to ensure the product is what end users wants. Althogh EPoX uses this 6100-430 chipset, it made a full sized ATX board. This is a surprise as most manufacturers would make a mATX board.

Its choice of 6100-430 also ensures that the specifications are inline wiht most users want. GbE, 4 DIMMs, 4 SATAII ports, PCIex16. In contrast the cheaper 6100-405 do not have all these. This board has features of mainstream boards.

In terms of performance, this board is just like any AM2 compatible chipset. It performs well when paired up with an external graphics card. With its internal graphics, it outperform the 6100-405 board. In fact, in some benchmarks like PCMark05, it exhibits very fast SATAII performance.

In terms of overclocking, the board has the basic options like voltage for dimm and cpu, cpu freq range of up to 450MHz and a up to 10x multiplier option. There are options to lock PCI and PCIe too. For overclocking options, please see Gallery for BIOS options. In our overclocking test, we set the HT multiplier to 4x (800MHz) and set the CPU multiplier to 10x, CPU Vcore to 1.4v and push the CPU CLK to 290MHz. There is also an option for overclocking the integrated GPU.

Overall, the board works well with both integrated and external graphics card. You can also do a multi monitor with 2 displays. Although the chipset is passively cooled, it is still warm to touch. I would suggest mounting a fan on it. The chipset does not have purevideo decoding built in unlike the 6150. The board also do not come with eSATA or 1394 for external connectivity. This ought to be available if it would be the media centre.

Pricing (US/UK)

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Pros

• 8 Ch HDA audio
• 4 SATAII
• Overclocking of GPU
• GbE

Cons

• No 1394

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.