ECS & Gigabyte motherboards (Intel P45 and P43)
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Date: 04.12.2008 |
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BIOS
The BIOS of the Gigabyte's board is based on the Award BIOS version, that of the ECS - on the AMI BIOS version.
The major memory settings of the Gigabyte's board are gathered in the overclocking section:
All the auxiliary latency timings are gathered in separate subsections:
However, this number of parameters makes sense only with good compatibility to various memory modules. At that, Gigabyte EP43-DS3 suffers from serious problems. In particular, the board wouldn't start up with the test kits Corsair DDR2 TWIN2X2048-8500C5 and GoodMem DDR2 GP1066D264L5/2GDC, and passed all the tests with only the A-Data DDR2-800 AD8200X001GU modules.
The ECS' board offers much fewer latency timings available to adjust:
But even this model also showed the compatibility problem: the board does not work with A-Data AD31600X001GU modules. But all the tests were passed with the Qimonda DDR3-1333 kit running at 1066 MHz.
The next important parameter that affects the performance is setting the memory operating frequency. At the same time, the Gigabyte's board offers a number of memory operation modes for each of the multipliers:
But the ECS board supports only standard multipliers, and there is no declared support for DDR3-1600.
Now look at the system monitoring sections.
Both the motherboards display the current temperatures for the CPU, system, as well as voltages on the CPU and memory. Besides, the Gigabyte's board keeps track of the main voltages as well (+12V, +3.3V). The boards determine the rotational speeds of the fans (Gigabyte's - 4 coolers, ECS' - two) and also offer the feature for adjustment of the CPU cooler rotational speed depending on the CPU temperature (SmartFAN).
Besides, the Gigabyte's board is able storing and loading the BIOS settings as profiles (eight profiles are available).
To handle the BIOS firmware, the Gigabyte's motherboard offers the integrated Q-Flash utility. At the same time, Gigabyte offers the Windows utility @BIOS whose current version is incompatible to EP43-DS3.
Overclocking and stability
Before we move on to overclocking, let's look at the power converters. The PWM of Gigabyte EP43-DS3 uses a 4-phase scheme in which there are seven 820 mkF and four 470 mkF capacitors. The PWM of the ECS board uses a 4-phase power scheme, in which there are seven 820 mkF and four 270 mkF capacitors.
On the Gigabyte's motherboard, all the overclocking tools are gathered in the "MB Intelligent Tweaker" (M.I.T) section,
on the ECS board - in the "M.I.B" (MB Intelligent BIOS) section:
| Motherboard |
Gigabyte EP43-DS3 |
ECS P45T-AD3 |
| Multiplier adjustment |
+ |
+ |
| FSB adjustment |
within 100 MHz to 1200 MHz (1 MHz) |
within (200)333 MHz to 700 MHz (1 MHz) |
| Vcore adjustment |
within 0.5V to 2.35V (0.00625-0.02V) |
within +0.05V to +0.328V (~0.05V) |
| Vmem adjustment |
within 1.45V to 3.04V (0.02-0.05V); DDR2 |
within 1.5 V to 2.1V (0.01V); DDR3 |
| Vdd adjustment |
within 0.85 V to 2.0V (0.02-0.05V) |
within 1.11V to 1.26V (0.05V) |
| Vsb adjustment |
- |
- |
| Vsb-io adjustment |
within 1.05V to 2.31V (0.02-0.05V) |
- |
| Vtt adjustment |
within 1.1 to 1.7V (0.02 V) |
- |
| PCI-E adjustment |
within 90 MHz to 150 MHz (1 MHz) |
within 100 MHz to 200 MHz (1 MHz) |
We found no serious issues with the overclocking tools: all is convenient and handy. Among the special traits, we note the feature for dynamic overclocking in the Gigabyte's board (the proprietary "C.I.A. 2" utility):
Now let's look at the practical results of overclocking. The maximum stable FSB speed in the Gigabyte's board is 412 MHz; that for the ECS board - 420 MHz.
In our view, the issue of overclocking in the Gigabyte's board is related to the same problems of adequate memory setting: the system was running extremely unstably once the frequency exceeded DDR2-800. As regards the ECS' board, the obstacle for further overclocking is the lack of a feature for adjusting the Vtt and the small range of the Vdd adjustment. In any case, it is a good result for the ECS product, in view of the attitude of the manufacturer to overclocking.
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