Last week, we took a look at the AMD 780G board ECS A780GM-A. Today, we take a look at another black label series main board, the ECS GF8200A. The GF8200A uses a single chipset, the NVIDIA MCP78S or GF8200A which is the direct competitor to the AMD 780G chipset. Both chipsets target the integrated graphics main boards.

The mainboard supports the AMD Phenom AM2+, AM 64 x3 dual core, Athlon 64 and Sempron processors. It has 4 DIMM of DDR2 of up to 32GB can be installed on board.

With it's integrated DX10 graphics, it paves the way for running applications that takes advantage of it's compliance. With the improved integrated GPU, it is able to take advantage of Hybrid SLI technology. This allows the board to boost up the overall 3D performance by cooperating with the onboard integrated graphics. So far, for Hybrid Boost, the highest speed supported graphics card is the 8500GT. As for Hybrid Power, only one card will work, that is the 9800GX2. The list might expand to include to other cards in the future.

Similar to the AMD 780G version of the board, ECS maintains the D-SUB and do away with the DVI-D interface. It is replaced it with a HDMI interface. The HDMI port supports HDCP function to enjoy better quality with High Definition HDCP Encryption contents.

In terms of expansion, the board has 6 USB (6 more can be connected via brackets), 6 SATA II ports (1 shared with eSATA port) for RAID 0,1,5,10,JBOD. It also has a PCIex16, GbE, 7.1 channel audio. There is also a PCIe x16 Gen 2 slot for external graphics card use or pair up with the IGP for Hybrid SLI.

ECS has put in more effort into it's BIOS. This is the first time I see NB voltage, high VDIMM, CPU Voltage options made available in the BIOS. You can take a look at the options in the BIOS Pages.

As for CPU support of these new generation main boards have been discussed in our forums. As a general guide, a 4 phase design might not be designed for the 125W TDP high end CPUs. It is best that users refer to ECS website for a list of the supported CPUs for this board.

The package is also very simple with just the manual, cdrom, IDE, 2 SATA II cable and bracket.

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