ECS & Gigabyte motherboards (Intel P45 and P43)

By the end of 2008, the pressing of Intel P45 based motherboards has somehow subsided from the manufacturers' side. Almost all the interesting and popular motherboards have already been reviewed, and products built on other Intel chipsets of the fourth series have started coming in to our test lab. In particular, this time we are reviewing Gigabyte EP43-DS3 built on the Intel P43 chipset.

As we already stated, the only thing that makes P43 from P45 is the lack of support for the AMD CrossFire. In practice, that means the impossibility of symmetrical distribution of PCI Express v2.0 bus lanes between the two graphic slots. As a result, we can see only one PEG slot on P43-based motherboards. However, Gigabyte EP43-DS3 has two such slots. What's up? We'll find that out now.

Besides the Gigabyte's board, we've got ECS P45T-AD3 built on the Intel P45. At first glance, that looks like a commonplace model, but there is one trait in it: the board is meant to operate with the DDR3 memory. While this type of memory used to be supported by only high-end products (because of the high price for this type of memory), and now its support can be found in mid-end products.

Specifications

Retail boxes

Design of the packages:

Package bundle

The package bundle of both the boards is absolutely similar and quite scanty, but it is fully adequate to a product that costs $100. Gigabyte EP43-DS3 costs just $100, so we rate it as "4/5" for the package bundle. As regards ECS P45T-AD3, this model is still not yet presented in the Russian retail.

With the Gigabyte's board, the buyer gets a user manual and a lot of other paper items of various usefulness:

The remaining contents: cables, and a cap.

The package bundle of the Elitegroup motherboard is similar, except there is a bit less paper:

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.

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:

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.

Performance tests

While determining the starting FSB speed, it turned out that the boards set it at a high enough precision.

In our test setup, we used the following hardware:

Apart from the motherboards in question, we used Foxconn ELA (Intel P45) in our tests.

Synthetic tests

Tests of application software

Video encoding (DivX, Xvid) was measured in seconds, i.e. the less the better.

Data compression (WinRAR) was measured in Kb/sec, i.e. the more, the better.

Tests with Games

Final Words

We start with Gigabyte EP43-DS3. This product will appeal to those users who are planning a migration to the latest generation of Intel processors and wish to assemble a system without "frills" like CrossFire, RAID, overclocking. This board is a perfect candidate for system upgrade in case the user need to use more than three PCI expansion boards. The only thing which should be taken into account when buying this board is its low compatibility to various memory modules. In view of the number of BIOS firmware upgrades (the most recent - F9), the engineers at Gigabyte are actively working at solving this issue, albeit with not much of success so far.

As regards ECS P45T-AD3, it may interest users who are more enthusiastic. This model offers full support for the CrossFire and is aimed solely at DDR3 memory operation. However, it is no good as a framework for the overclocking system: the overclocking tools have been implemented just as "tick off": At the same time, there are some user complaints regarding the compatibility to memory modules (although the test kit is not yet enough for a comprehensive conclusion).

Conclusion