Review Conclusion of ECS P45T-A Intel P45 chipset mainboard review

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Review Conclusion of ECS P45T-A Intel P45 chipset mainboard review
Bluetooth 15 Jul 2008

Conclusion

ECS Black label series is ECS's mid range series that targets price/performance built with quality. As we have seen so far, the numbers tells us that the ECS P45T-A isn't that bad after all. In some areas, the numbers are far better than the more expensive copper heatpipe boards.

Features wise, the ECS P45T-A is basically just a board that conforms too much to the specs. For example, some boards support DDR2-1200 but ECS only supports DDR2-800. You also don't get fanciful names for power savings features which adds up to the cost. What I liked most on this board is the external SATA and the power on /off and reset switches. ECS could have put in a DEBUG LED and CLR CMOS. That would make it better.

In terms of overclocking, the BIOS included a large range of FSB and voltage options available. You can see the BIOS options here. In our o/c test, we used a E6550 processor that clocks at 7x333. As the BIOS have bugs that disallow the multiplier option when used with a Dual Core processor, we are unable to lower the multiplier to 6x. Instead, we used the default 7x and o/c it by setting the freq. 470MHz. CPU voltage is upped by +0.23v and Vdimm at 2.3v. If the multiplier can work on the Core 2 Duo, i think there shouldn't be any issues overclocking the FSB beyond 500MHz x multiplier.

In conclusion, this board serves the needs for those who require P45 performance and CrossFire in future. It has all the basic features that most users would require and priced at an affordable price.

BIOS used : 0619. For beta bios, please visit http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs

Discuss

Pros

Wide range of FSB
eSATA
Low price

Cons

BIOS multiplier missing on Dual Core CPUs
no debug LED
Packaging
no software o/c tools

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

Category	Score
Performance	9 / 10
Features	6 / 10
Ease Of Installation	10 / 10
Overclocking Features	8 / 10
Documentation	8 / 10
Packaging	6 / 10
Cost / Performance	9 / 10
Overall Rating :	8 / 10

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