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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Friday, May 4, 2007
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NVIDIA has launched two new chipsets in the last few weeks, the nForce 680i LT SLI chipset, which has many of the features of the 680i chipset minus the higher memory clocking and a third PCI Express x16 slot for other uses and the nForce 650 Ultra chipset which was launched this week which lacks SLI technology for $99. This board is fairly well rounded and offers adequate performance and features for its price range.
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
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ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) has been good enough to supply us with its latest model called the 965PLT-A. While the board has "965" in its name, it does not actually feature a 965 chipset. In fact it is based on the new 946GZ chipset from Intel, designed with the new GMA 3000 graphics chip embedded in the northbridge. We plan to test this chipset to see how it performs compared to a 6200 TurboCache graphics card as well as our normal tests with the Radeon X1950Pro. So come have a look at the latest board to cross our labs.
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
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In closing, we would highly recommend Nvidia 8600GTS to anyone who is looking for a mainstream graphic card, which gives plenty of performance for the current generation of games and the DX10 support for the up coming games once they are released. This GPU will be the ideal partner to the economical 20" and 22" LCD monitors that are starting to appear on the market.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
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Today we are looking at nVidia's mainstream SLI product designed to keep the costs down but give the customer something that is worth the money. Today we are looking at the nVidia nForce 650i SLI chipset in the form of the version 1.0 NF650iSLIT-A motherboard from ECS. Its advantage is that it is cheaper than more expensive 680i SLI and 680i SLI LT motherboards but does that make it a substandard motherboard? Let's read on and check out the onboard features, performance and overclocking and then try and make a decision.
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ECS places both an IEEE 1394b and 1394a ports on the rear I/O along with four USB 2.0 ports. In terms of connectivity, the rear I/O supports all the standard interconnects, except for a printer port. The printer port is included as a bracket along with the ECS PN1 SLI2 Extreme. There are also three USB 2.0 and one IEEE 1394a internal headers available for expansion brackets.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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This motherboard comes packed with many features sure to make an enthusiast happy. The ECS PN2-SLI2+ supports the hugely popular Intel Core 2 Duo processors, along with all other socket 775 processors (even Core 2 Quad processors are supported). The board also supports SATA2 and comes with a built-in RAID controller allowing you to create RAID arrays in several configurations. Gigabit LAN (with two LAN ports) is also provided on this motherboard, as are three PCI Express slots (2 of which are capable of running modern video cards in SLI for increased performance).
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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ECS wants a mere £180 for a retail GeForce 8800 GTS 320. Superb buy or cost-cutting to the extreme?
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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The ECS board is in many respects similar to the ASUS board I reviewed at the AMD launch of the 690G chipset. The motherboard comes with the most bare of essentials in terms of bundle, as the board comes with a single SATA cable and a single IDE cable.
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Monday, March 12, 2007
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ECS put together a decent board in the form of the NF650iSLIT-A. It is a board that performs wonderfully at stock settings. As you could see in our testing, the lack of being able to keep tRCD settings for the memory really only hurt performance in a few of our benchmarks. Overall, the board hung with its competition, which is quite a statement since we have it up against the likes of chipsets like the Intel 975x and Nvidia 680i, as well as a proven winner in the Asus 650i board. In fact, it beat out these boards in some of our tests, proving that ECS and this chipset are both to be commended.
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
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The ECS PN2 SLI2+ is one the many "Designed by nVIDIA" motherboards hitting the streets. It is based on the nVidia nForce 680i SPP and nForce 680i MCP chipsets. Compared to the previous high end nVIDIA nForce 590 Intel Edition chipset, the nForce 680i SLI really only officially supports a higher FSB (up to 1333 MHz by default). There are four DDR2 memory slots which can accommodate up to 8GB of DDR2-800 memory, and "SLI-Ready" memory rated up to 1200 MHz. The 680i SLI chipset naturally supports dual PCI Express x16 videocards in SLI, with a full 16 PCI Express lanes each (the third PCI Express x16 slot is capped at x8). We'll get to the full peripheral expansion options in a moment.
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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ECS did a good thing with the release of the PN2 SLI2+ motherboard. It is a solid board that performs very well and overclocks well when leaving the multiplier alone. If you are in the market for a new motherboard, and are looking for a 680i board, you will want to take a look at the ECS PN2 SLI2+ for sure...
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Monday, February 12, 2007
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Today we are looking at one of the first culminations from ATI/AMD. While some of the older chips have been renamed, today-s contender is the first to be made since the merger occurred last year. Named the AMD 690 chipset series, it carries some new features. ECS have kindly sent us the first sample to us ahead of launch at the end of this month. It-s based on the AMD 690G chipset and comes with embedded ATI Radeon X1250 graphics with support for all Socket AM2 processors.
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Saturday, January 27, 2007
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The ECS PX1 Extreme is an interesting board in many respects. The board supports Intel's Viiv platform. The included bundle is excellent in every respect with the hardware and software both, as 5 SATA cables are enough for everyone except the most ardent enthusiast. The board supports ATI's Crossfire dual video card setup, meaning if you have two cards you can run them in simultaneous mode.
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Monday, January 8, 2007
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With AMD and ATI merged, there is only one other game in town: INTEL and NVIDIA. The PN1 SLI2 matches up the INTEL Core 2 DUO to a NVIDIA 590 SLI Chipset. As one of ECS's "EXTREME" products, the board certainly does look the part. It also has one of the most complete bundles and a new black PCB. But does it perform? Let's find out!
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Thursday, January 4, 2007
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We've seen a couple of nForce 680i boards already here at HEXUS. Now it's the turn of ECS to showcase its nForce 680i SLI. Is it more of the same or has ECS done things differently? Read on to see if the PN2 SLI2+ makes for a sweeter deal.
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