Bios, Overclocking, Installation:

What I saw on the first boot was both the most and least impressive feature of this motherboard’s bios. ECS has implemented a clean, stylish splash screen here which… cannot be disabled; which makes boot-time troubleshooting that much more troublesome.

Black Splash Screen

Bios Frontend

Getting into the bios itself is a little bit of a hassle, as the key to do it is F2, rather than the usual delete. The overall layout of the bios is fairly decent, and users shouldn’t have too much trouble finding what they need; well, in all but one case, and that being the overclocking features.

Standard CMOS	Advanced Setup	Integrated Perpetuals
PC Health Status	M.I.B	Impossible FSB

These features hide out in the sparsely populated yet stylishly named M.I.B. Menu, or the Motherboard Intelligent Bios menu. Here, the user can adjust the FSB up to an alarming 700MHz (you’ll never reach it), as well as adjusting processor voltages, memory latencies, ratios, and voltages. If there seems to be something missing from that list, it’s because there is – this bios has no support for multiplier adjusting, which is the first major hurdle for an overclocker. The second hurdle, which is the lack of memory ratios – those available being 1:1 and 3:5 (to set DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 respectively) leave the user mostly unable to rail the FSB higher. Worse, it leaves the user unable to run memory to its rated speed – provided that speed is over 800MHz.

Now, this is the part of the review where the writer usually gushes over the features available, or laments a poor result – neither of which is exactly possible. I was unable to make the motherboard achieve a FSB of 400 – a very basic task, which was even possible with the ancient 965 motherboards; and with that, meant that memory, and processor overclocking were to be forgotten. In short, this failing rendered the adjustable voltages a pointless addition. In short, overclocking this motherboard would be about as easy as using a live trout to wire a wall socket; not so much in the way of DFI boards, where difficulty is rewarding, but in the way of pure sadism if you should try.

Once the bios had been left behind, and no obvious issues cropped up, I figured that there is one thing to point out – don’t install the bottom right standoff on this motherboard, as it sits directly below the on-PCB power switches, and though it doesn’t interfere with the motherboard’s function, it greatly worries me to leave a piece of metal where it can short something out. Apart from this issue, installation was uneventful, and simple. This is very good, I would say. Let’s begin performance testing.

Performance & Conclusion:

CPU-Z General

CPU-Z Mobo

CPU-Z Memory

CPU-Z SPD

The Test Bed:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
ECS P45T-A Black Edition / ASUS P5K-E Wi-Fi AP
4x1GB Kingmax Mars DDR2-1066 @ 1066, 5-5-5-15
NVIDIA 8800GTS 640MB @ Stock
Western Digital WD2500JB

As the P45 chipset is an evolutionary step from the P35 motherboard being tested against, I came to expect a rise in performance from this motherboard – an expectation that you might need to scroll through this page to find out the results of. Testing is simple – run a benchmark on each system, with a fresh Windows XP image each time, so that no drivers can conflict between systems. The results are recorded below; Note: In all cases except SANDRA latency, higher is better

While overclocking turned out to be a complete wash, the motherboard’s performance across this battery of tests certainly was not. In nearly every case, the P45 chipset on ECS’ P45T-A Black showed a performance gain, as well as a drop in latency – both of which mean good things for the gamer, and enthusiast in general. Was this motherboard the overclocker’s darling, performing far and beyond what was expected? No. Did it perform well, and maintain stability through all the tests? Yes, and flawlessly. A product can’t be faulted for doing what it says it will, and for that ECS needs to be commended.

In short, this inexpensive motherboard is fast, stable, and features a ton of opportunities for expansion. While the lack of firewire is indeed a disappointment, I believe that this can be taken as a non-issue for gamers. Considering the features present, the speeds attained, and the stability of the system overall during the testing procedures, I feel that this motherboard is a good buy if a user is looking to assemble a low cost, reliable gaming machine. It’s just a shame that this product doesn’t have what it takes to break free of just what it was meant to do, but given the fact that it costs just shy of $110 – or rather, is shockingly cheap, I would say this is a good candidate for the great value award!

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