|
|
Reviews Around The Web
|
Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme is a massive upgrade from something that is only two years old. Unfortunately I do not have any more recent boards to compare it to. However, when you look around and compare the performance of the KN1 SLI Extreme to other nForce4 SLI-based boards you will find that it is right in the ballpark with the rest of them. The board has worked flawlessly for over two months now as I have put it through its paces running Folding while having marathon gaming sessions of World of Warcraft or Call of Duty 2, it has never hiccupped once. Heck, I was able to crank up all the features and still double my frame rates in WoW...
|
|
Thursday, April 20, 2006
|
|
|
.jpg)
|
|
ECS refreshes the 945G-M3 to ride on the Viiv bandwagon, but is it really worth it to jump onto the whole Viiv hype? Early adopters will definitely want to give it a look or two, but we find out that this little gem of a board isn't really about the Viiv at all. Find out more inside...
|
|
Friday, April 14, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
Hardware manufacturers have started putting the Intel VIIV logo on components which can be used for home theatre purposes, so this makes sorting through stores shelves a little simpler. Marketing people love logos and the Intel VIIV one is certainly swanky. The brand spanking new ECS 945G-M3 motherboard is one of the first generation Intel VIIV compatible boards to be touted as such. However if you just want a low cost workstation PC with an onboard Intel graphics card, the ECS 945G-M3 can fit that purpose quite well...
|
|
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
ECS C19-A SLI motherboard is one of these affordable nForce4 SLI XE-packing motherboards, and it's paired with the nVidia MCP51 Southbridge. In terms of expansion, the motherboard boasts two PCI Express x16 slots for single or dual videocard configurations, two PCI Express x1 slots for higher bandwidth devices, and three 32 bit PCI slots for legacy peripherals..
|
|
Friday, March 24, 2006
|
|
|
.jpg)
|
|
The KA1 MVP is based on the AMD version of the RD480 and will work with all current AMD Socket 939 processors, including the Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX. Unlike the aforementioned mainstream ATI motherboards though, the KA1 MVP is the first Radeon Xpress 200 series board to be packaged under ECS' Extreme branding, marking it as a performance oriented board instead. If you liked what ECS delivered with the RX480-A, but wished it was more fully featured, the KA1 MVP might just be that board. Not to mention its dual graphics and CrossFire capabilities will appeal to gamers and enthusiasts alike...
|
|
Friday, February 10, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
ECS has good relationships with all chipset makers and is early to market with all of the new technologies including the motherboard I will be looking at today, the KA1 MVP from their Extreme line of motherboards. Sporting the ATI RD480 and SB450 southbridge chipset, the KA1 MVP is the latest in a long line of successful motherboards from ECS. This board has everything including, SATAII with RAID0 and RAID1, 8-channel audio, Dual Lan, and is Dual core and Crossfire ready. So let's quit wasting time talking about it and have a look...
|
|
Friday, February 3, 2006
|
|
|
.jpg)
|
|
ECS is another vendor to hop onto some ATI CrossFire action with the PF22 Extreme. This board is high on features, offers better performance than the mid-range PF5 Extreme and most importantly, CrossFire compatibility on the cheap. Don't miss this review...
|
|
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
The first thing you that you'll probably notice on the KN2 SLI would be the incredibly long slot in the middle of the board that ECS calls S.D.G.E and we'll talk more about that in the features section. The S.D.G.E slot sits between the first PCI-E x16 slot and the CPU and requires an S.D.G.E card which, in our opinion, blocks the airflow due to its huge size...
|
|
Thursday, January 5, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
The RS480-M has turned out to be an impressive little work machine capable of doing more if you put in the money for a good video card. While the ATi Xpress 200 chipset is still relatively new, the abundance of people moving over to micro ATX makes it an ideal choice for SFF/HTPC machines. This is exactly where the RS480 fits in. Despite only having the power of an X300, you won't notice any problems while watching your favorite movie. Where the RS480-M can improve on is being bundled with VIVO, or at least TV-Out...
|
|
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
ECS does a very good job with the packaging with tons of applications and some nice cables included. However, the layout of this board is far from perfect and thats something ECS needs to work on. Feature-wise, the board is pretty decent offering you everything from Gigabit LAN and SATA2 to CrossFire technology. We also like ECS' Top Hat technology. Performance of this board is also pretty good- matching or exceeding any new board based on the nForce4 or ATI chipset however, overclocking could be improved and ECS should think about using MOSFETs rather than capacitors. We couldn't test out the board in CrossFire configuration as we didn't have access to a CrossFire setup in our labs at the moment...
|
|
Saturday, November 19, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
ECS has provided us with another motherboard from its Extreme range in the form of the KN1 SLI Extreme, supporting AMD's Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPUs. It comes with gigabit ethernet, dual RAID, SATA II, IEEE 1394a Firewire, 10 USB2 ports and dual PCI-Express x16 interconnects for NVIDIA SLI. This board is packed with features for the hardcore user, but does it have the performance and reliability to match? We report our experiences over the next few pages...
|
|
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
Layout wise, the PA1 MVP puts barely a foot wrong. The CPU socket area has good space, power connectors are well sited, there are no fans to cause undue noise and peripheral headers are placed logically. The only issue with the board from a layout perspective is the PCI Express 1X slot that sits between the pair of 16X slots. Using a dual-slot cooler on the graphics board in the top slot you'll loose the use of that 1X slot. We'll talk about that more on the next page where features are discussed...
|
|
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
Today we take the ECS KN1 Extreme SLI motherboard out for a spin. Looking at the specifications the board is based on NVIDIA's NF4 chipset and features SLI technology, so should we expect to see a solid motherboard if done right. ECS told us to expect more from this SLI board than the original KN1 Extreme. Read on to see the results...
|
|
Thursday, September 29, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
The ECS KN1-SLI Extreme looks like a pretty sweet motherboard for anyone on a budget who wants good performance, and the all important option of running dual PCI Express x16 SLI-compatible videocards. Based on the nVidia nForce4 SLI chipset, the ECS KN1-SLI Extreme supports all the current flavours of Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX/X2 processors. Its four DDR DIMM slots can be installed with as much as 4GB of PC3200 DDR memory (non ECC unbuffered) in a dual channel configuration...
|
|
Thursday, September 22, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
The PF21's performance isn't amazing but still come as a surprise, since ECS was never known as a company that cares much about the performance of its products. There's no doubt that the PF21 has very reasonable performance, and its pretty even with other motherboards in its category. In conclusion, we can say that ECS presents a new line of good motherboards and buying them is in no way a loss or a compromise, thanks to the rich bundle and the good performance - a trend that is consistent in the other motherboards of the "Extreme" series...
|
|
|
|
|
|