Today we are taking a break from the ultra high-end gaming gear to bring you a review on something a little less extreme. The ECS 945GCT-D is in fact anything but extreme, at least in terms of performance. It does however provide users with a low cost, low power alternative to computing…
Atom is the brand name for a line of x86 and x86-64 CPUs designed by Intel, previously code-named Silverthorne and Diamondville These 45nm processors were intended for use in MIDs, smart phones, and ultra-mobile PCs meant for portable and low-power applications. Ultimately, it ended up being a preferred processor for netbooks.
Because they were targeted for low power consumption rather than performance, the Intel Atoms benchmark significantly lower than processors designed for laptop and desktop use. The rough benchmark used by Intel is that the Atoms have about “half the performance” of (Dothan-512 core) Celeron processors.
While this might not make the Atom a very powerful solution, it still has more than enough guts to get through simple day to day tasks, such as word processing, sending e-mails, and surfing the net. Despite their limited performance and the fact that they were only released last year, the Atom has made its way into some pretty impressive systems.
The Atom has become the heart and soul of the HP Mini Series, ASUS N10, ASUS Eee PC, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Gigabyte M912, LG X Series, Samsung NC10, Toshiba NB100, MSI Wind PC netbooks, Zenith Z-Book, and the Archos 10 to name a few.
Clearly the Atom has become a hit in the netbook market, but it is also starting to have an impact on the desktop computer market as well. Because the Atom is capable of taking on simple day to day tasks, it makes for an ideal desktop alternative, and with massive power savings it really does make sense. Therefore, we have begun to see more and more Mini-ITX boards take on the Atom, and today we have yet another example.
There are a few different ultra compact desktop form factors available and while Mini-ITX is likely the most common, there is also Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX, and Mini-DTX for example. In fact, today’s review item is based on the Mini-DTX form factor, making it slightly longer than a Mini-ITX motherboard. This means that the ECS 945GCT-D should support slightly more devices than a board based on the Mini-ITX form factor.
While the specifications of the ECS 945GCT-D may not blow you away, its size, power consumption, operating temperatures, and volume will. This is not a Mini-ITX board, but rather it is a Mini-DTX board, measuring just 20×17 centimeters, making it smaller than the side mounted fan in my Thermaltake gaming case.
The 945GCT-D is outfitted with an Intel Atom 230 (1.6GHz) processor soldered directly to the PCB, while at the heart of this board is the Intel 945GC chipset featuring the ICH7 south bridge. It appears that all desktop-based Atom motherboards use this same budget Core 2 chipset. This chipset has been around for over two years now, which may be an issue depending on your expectations.
Despite being a budget oriented product, the 945GC still uses a fair amount of power, and is the main source of heat on the 945GCT-D. The Atom 230 uses a 533MHz FSB with 533MHz DDR2 memory, both of which are supported by the 945GC.
Then, where this chipset really lets us down is on the graphics front, due to the use of the heavily underpowered Integrated GMA 950 graphics engine, which barely deserves the name. While the Intel GMA 950 graphics work fine for basic Windows Vista rendering with the Aero theme enabled, do not expect to play any 3D games.
The ICH7 south bridge used on this board was typical of the Pentium 4/Pentium M days, as it was released back in 2005. The 945GCT-D offers two of the four supported SATA ports, with the only expansion slot being a traditional PCI port. There is also a single IDE connector on-board, supporting two devices.
ECS has included the Atheros AR8112 chip for 100-base networking, which is a little disappointing. Those wanting to use the 945GCT-D as a budget HTPC would have benefited from the additional bandwidth offered by a Gigabit network controller. The audio comes from the VIA VT1708B chip supporting 6-channel High Definition audio.
Other non-essential features, such as Wireless LAN and Firewire, are not present on the 945GCT-D, which is to be expected. The board supports up to 8 USB 2.0 ports – 4 on the I/O panel, 4 via the optional USB brackets.