ECS & Gigabyte motherboards (Intel P45 and P43)
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Date: 04.12.2008 |
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Layout and Features
At first glance, both the motherboards can be attributed to one and the same class and almost nothing reveals the difference in the chipsets used.
The Gigabyte's motherboard have one shortcoming in the design: the latches of DIMM slots are blocked by the first video card. For most motherboards, that is a minor shortcoming provided there is a good compatibility to memory modules. But Gigabyte EP43-DS3 has serious issues in this regard (at least, with the version BIOS F9).
In the ECS board, there is no issue with blocking the DIMM slots, but there is something to find fault with about the design: the additional 4-pin power connector is placed inconveniently (near the "north bridge").
The "north bridge" on both the boards is cooled with massive radiators:
Each of the boards has four 240-pin DIMM slots for memory modules. However, the Gigabyte's board is aimed at using DDR2 maximum capacity - 16 GB), whereas the ECS' board - DDR3 (8 GB).
Each of the boards uses two PCI Express x16 slots. In fact, the configuration of the slots is different because of the different chipsets. All is simple with the ECS board: with one video cards used, 16 PCI Express v2.0 bus lanes are allocated to it, and with two video cards - 8 bus lanes to each, since ECS P45T-AD3 offers support for the AMD CrossFire.
Gigabyte EP43-DS3 does not support the CrossFire. To the first slot, 16 PCI-E v2.0 are always allocated, while merely 4 bus lanes (PCI-E v1.0) to the second slot. Therefore, the advantage from using the second PEG slot is about the option to install the second video cards and plug in four monitors to the system. On the ECS board, there are two PCI and two PCI Express x1 slots. On Gigabyte EP43-DS3, there are four PCI and one PCI Express x1 slots.
Let's now examine the expansion options. Both the boards support six SerialATA II links each, however, the "south bridges" are different. In particular, on Gigabyte EP43-DS3 there is an ICH10 chip, and on ECS P45T-AD3 - an ICH10R chip. In the end, the ECS board supports RAID arrays, while the Gigabyte's board doesn't (however, in the assortment of Gigabyte there is the model Gigabyte EP43-DS3R with the ICH10R).
The engineers of the companies have also used different chips to implement the ParallelATA interface: on the Gigabyte's board, there is the IT8213, and on the ECS's - JMB361 made by JMicron. The JMB361 offers support for another SerialATA port which is brought over to the rear panel.
Then, both the motherboards support 12 USB 2.0 ports. On the Gigabyte's board, eight ports are positioned on the rear panel, with four more plugged in with brackets. The ECS board has a different configuration of ports: 6 on the rear panel and 6 additional ones. By the way, there are no brackets with external ports in the package bundle of none of the boards. The Gigabyte board also supports the Firewire bus. For that, there is an additional controller TSB43AB23 made by Texas Instruments which supports three matching ports (two on the rear panel + one additional). Now a few words on the High Definition Audio subsystem. The Gigabyte's board uses the Realtek ALC888 codec, and the ECS' - ALC883. Both the motherboards offer support for a high-speed network connection. On the Gigabyte's board, there is a Realtek RTL8111C controller, on the ECS' - an Athlos L1.
 Each of the boards Supports one COM port, and on the ECS' it is installed on the rear panel, while on the Gigabyte's it is plugged in with a bracket (missing in the package bundle). Besides, the Gigabyte's board supports an LPT port, also via a bracket.
Note that on the ECS' board there are buttons to power-on and reboot the system, as well as a button to clear the CMOS settings.
Now on to the BIOS settings.
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