Some of our readers may recall our initial HEXUS.headline on Epox's EP-8NPA-SLI, which at the time looked to be an interesting and maybe even feasible cheap SLI upgrade solution. Epox has now announced that the product has shipped to a UK trade distributor, so we can expect stock appearing in UK stores.
To re-cap the 8NPA-SLI's 'appeal' as it were: It's a Socket-754 SLI solution, which means you can start with a relatively cheap system, based around Sempron CPU and perhaps a 6600LE or similar. Such a system will play games with competence. Obviously it's no frame rate powerhouse, but current games should be playable at reasonable quality and resolution settings. As time progresses the board gives the option to upgrade either the processor - perhaps to an Athlon 64 - or throw in a second graphics card and enable SLI. Two ways to increase performance, both on the relatively cheap.
Despite the 'budget to mainstream gamer' nature of the motherboard, it's no lightweight in terms of features, with an HTT clock that'll reach 330MHz, Epox say, along with reset and power micro-switches on the board.
It will be interesting to see what the UK market makes of the board, and whether gamers a bit short on cash at the moment use it as a means to future upgrades.
