Today we are checking out a brand new Intel P45 based motherboard from ECS designed to deliver high-end performance to the masses. While this budget board costs roughly $100 US, it does have one interesting surprise in store for bargain shoppers that it not likely to impress. Since its arrival DDR3 memory has done little to impress, offering mediocre performance gains at ridiculous price premiums. So does it have any place on a budget ECS motherboard?
With more than half a dozen Intel Core 2 Duo processors priced well below $200 US, building a relatively powerful computer for next to nothing has become child’s play. Take the Core 2 Duo E7200 which we recently featured in our “Building The Ultimate Budget Gaming PC” article. This 2.53GHz dual-core processor features a 3MB L2 cache and has enough guts to go head to head with pretty much anything, at least for gaming.
Priced at just $120 US the E7200 really helps keep building costs down and in the past this kind of money would be lucky to land you a flaccid Celeron type processor. Even the big guns, such as the E8500 clocked at 3.16GHz, costs less than $200 US, which is amazing given that this is currently Intel’s most potent dual-core processor.
Also helping to make the ultimate budget gaming PC a reality are current DDR2 memory prices. Recently we checked out the G.Skill PI Black PC2-6400 4GB memory kit, which if you can believe it is selling for just $70 US. Yes, you read that correctly, 4GB (2x2GB) of low-latency DDR2 memory for just $70 US. The only problem that we are faced with now is finding an affordable motherboard that complements all this fine hardware.
Currently the more desirable ASUS motherboards sporting the Intel P45 chipset cost the better part of $200 US. Recently we checked out the equally impressive MSI P45 Platinum which would set you back about $170 US, which is really quite good. The motherboard that we have here today on the other hand is designed to save you even more money, as it has been slapped with a bargain basement price of just $100 US.
This motherboard is known as the ECS P45T-AD3, and like the other more expensive Intel P45 motherboards this version includes the ICH10R south bridge chip. In terms of features the P45T-A D3 seems to be fairly well equipped at first glance, and while it may not have all the bells and whistles of the more expensive boards, the essentials are all certainly there. What we will be interested to find is just how well this budget board performs and how much overclocking headroom it will offer Core 2 owners.
The list of integrated peripherals includes; Gigabit LAN, 8-Channel Audio, USB 2.0, Serial ATA RAID, and eSATA, while Firewire does appear to be missing. Keep in mind that the ECS P45T-AD3 does use the Intel P45 chipset, while it also comes with the ICH10R south bridge, so first let’s look at the chipset features…
In order to support the latest DDR memory types, the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) features wider buses that support Dual-Channel DDR2 at 667/800/1066 and DDR3 at 1066/1333, for up to an incredible 16GB of memory. ECS also supports native DDR3-1600 memory with the P45T-AD3 through overclocking. The P45T-AD3 exclusively supports the latest DDR3 memory and therefore users cannot use ultra cheap DDR2 memory on this motherboard, which is something to keep in mind.
Another chipset feature is the Intel High Definition Audio (Intel HD Audio). This technology features eight independent DMA audio engines that support multiple audio streams with audio codecs. Other audio features include jack-sensing, re-tasking functions, and multi-streaming technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations. The Realtek ALC883 audio controller has been used, which is a budget chip, though it does work quite well.
In an effort to remove the conventional IDE ATA standard, the P45 chipset has removed IDE support altogether. However, ECS has included a JMicron 361 controller chip that delivers support for an additional SATAII port and a single IDE port. The ICH10R south bridge also offers up to six Serial II ATA ports, boasting data transfer rates up to 300MB/s.
Intel also offers RAID functions for these six SATA ports, supporting RAID 0 for performance and RAID 1 for protection, along with RAID 5 and RAID10. Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) further boosts performance with Native Command Queuing (NCQ), and provides native hot plug for drive swaps.
The networking capabilities of the ECS P45T-AD3 are limited by today’s standard, though we have found the single Atheros L1 PCIe Gigabit LAN controller to be sufficient. This controller offers maximum throughput as it uses the PCI Express bus which does not restrict performance like the traditional PCI bus. Unfortunately there is no wireless network support featured on this motherboard, though that is probably something that will not faze too many users.