ECS GeForce6100SM-M is the first mATX board using NV's entry

Just like the other AM2 boards reviewed before, this board supports dual channel DDRII-800/667/533 with 2 DIMM slots with a max capacity of 4GB. The board also supports 2 SATA II 3.0Gb/s supporting RAID 0,1, JBOD, NCQ and hot plug functions. There is Fast ethernet, a 6ch HDA. There is 1 PCIe x8 for external VGA card.

In terms of overclocking, the board has the basic options like voltage for dimm and cpu, cpu freq range of up to 300MHz 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 266MHz.

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

• 6 Ch HDA audio
• Good USB performance

Cons

• No 1394
• No GbE
• 2 DIMM slots

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.