ECS P45T-A (Intel P45)

Today, we are reviewing the ECS P45T-A motherboard. This is the first product based on the most recent P45 chipset which belongs to the 4th series of Intel chipsets.

Here are the key traits in brief. They are two: support for the PCI Express v2.0, and symmetrical distribution of the bus lanes among the x16 slots. Therefore, in terms of support for the AMD CrossFire, any motherboard based on the P45 with a couple of graphics slots is a good alternative to motherboards based on the top-end Intel X38 and Intel X48 chipsets.

Among the secondary aspects, we note the memory controller that supports both DDR2 and DDR3 as well as that the SLI technology does not work on motherboards based on P45 (generally, with all motherboards on Intel chipsets). The last point to note - a bad news for NVIDIA, since the company will certainly not get a license for the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) interface, therefore will not be able producing legally the high-end chipsets for future Intel platforms.

ECS P45T-A Specifications

Package

The package of ECS P45T-A has the following design:

Package bundle

• motherboard;
• User's Manual in English + brief usage guide;
• Software & drivers CD;
• one ATA-133 cable;
• four SerialATA cables;
• a cap for the rear panel of the housing.

The package bundle looks scanty and somehow unbalanced. In particular, the SerialATA cables come without power supply adapters for respective devices; there are no additional brackets for USB ports.

As regards the user's manual, it was definitely written in a haste and has a number of grammar and logical flaws.

In view of the product's retail price, we rate the package bundle as "3.5/5".

ECS P45T-A: Layout and Features

The complaints to the board's design are as follows: it is very inconvenient to plug in a power cable to the additional 4-pin connector which is somewhere near the northern bridge. Another issue is in blocking the DIMM slots by the first PCI Express card.

Near the CPU socket, there is a 4-pin CPU_FAN1 connector for a matching cooler.

Besides it, there is one more 4-pin connector SYS_FAN1 (near the north bridge), and a 3-pin CASE_FAN connector (near the south bridge).

The motherboard uses a fully passive system for cooling the chipset, and the power supply module gets by without additional radiators.

Under the north bridge, there are four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules. They are partitioned into two groups, each having two slots. The first two slots refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second controller.

Note that the board supports DDR2-667/800 memory, and the maximum memory capacity makes 16 GB.

There are two PCI Express x16 slots onboard (with latches) which are meant for video cards.

Unlike the P35, this Intel's new chipset allows for a symmetrical distribution of PCI Express bus lanes among the slots following the 8+8 scheme, which allows providing a better efficiency of the CrossFire. Besides, the P45 chipset supports the PCI Express v2.0 bus that offers a two-fold bandwidth. We also note that there are two "regular" PCI and two PCI Express x1 slots onboard.

Expansion options

ECS P45T-A uses the ICH10R south bridge with a radiator. Therefore, the board supports six SerialATA II ports (yellow connectors) and allows merging hard disks into RAID arrays of levels 0,1,5, and 10.

Besides, one more SerialATA II device can be plugged in to JMB361 controller made by JMicron. The same chip provides support for an additional ParallelATA line.

Therefore, as many as 9 hard disks (7 SATA II + 2 PATA) altogether can be plugged in to ECS P45T-A. Then, the board offers 12 USB 2.0 ports. Six of them are fitted on the rear panel, with 6 more plugged in with brackets (missing in the package bundle).

Then, ECS P45T-A offers integrated 8-channel Intel High Definition Audio, with the ALC 883 chip used as the codec.

Now a few words on the network support: the board uses a L1 (Gigabit Ethernet) LAN controller made by Altheros.

The board's rear panel has the following configuration.

This is an almost standard scheme of connectors; missing only is the LPT port, and instead of the second COM port there is an eSATA port.

Besides, there is a couple of buttons to start up and reset the system on ECS P45T-A:

Now on to the BIOS settings.

BIOS

The BIOS of ECS P45T-A is built on the AMI BIOS version.

The kit of memory latency timings is in the overclocking section and is pretty scanty:

The same can be said about the parameter which is in charge of setting the memory frequency:

Now move on to the section to do with the system monitoring.

The board displays the current temperature values of the system as well as the rotational speed of the two fans. As you can see, the board does not display the CPU temperature nor the levels of main voltages.

Note that the coolers plugged in to the 4-pin connectors are able adjusting the rotational speeds depending on the temperature of the CPU and the system.

Overclocking and stability

Prior to moving to overclocking, let's look into the power converter. It uses a 4-phase power scheme, in which there are four 270 mkF and seven 820 mkF capacitors.

Now on to the overclocking features.

To test the overclocking, we used the well-proven specimen of CPU Intel E6550 which is able running at FSB=550 MHz with the nominal multiplier and the Vcore=1.55V. Normally, when determining the board's capability we reduce the CPU multiplier to attain higher FSB speeds in the "lite" mode. But ECS P45T-A does not support the feature for multiplier adjustment. Nor it allows for raising voltage on the north bridge. In the end, we recorded quite middling results: a stable operation at FSB=460 MHz.

Performance tests

While determining the starting FSB speed, the board overstated it by 0.3 MHz.

In our test setup, we used the following hardware:

Let's first take a look at the results of synthetic benchmarks.

Now on to the gaming benchmarks.

Tests of application software.

Final Words

ECS P45T-A is a perfect alternative to ECS P35T-A based on P35. With precisely the same expansion options, the board based on Intel P45 overclocks much better and works much better with the AMD CrossFire technology. However, if you don't need overclocking nor CrossFire, we can't bring in any argument in favor of the product based on P45. In this case, ECS P35T-A is better because it is cheaper (in due time, it was rewarded with our "Best Buy" award). Of course, in some time later the hype around Intel P45 will go down, the quantity and assortment of motherboards will expand, with the retail prices going down. That will occur either by the forthcoming autumn (the "Back to School" season), or by the winter (the Christmas sales). Once the price for ECS P45T-A drops down to ~100$, we can state that it is a more preferable option than ECS P35T-A.

Conclusion

Pros:

• high stability and good performance level;
• two PCI Express x16 slots;
• support for SerialATA II/RAID ( 7 links; ICH10R + JMB 361);
• support for one P-ATA link (JMB 361);
• integrated 8-channel audio and Gigabit Ethernet LAN controller;
• support for the USB2.0 interface (12 ports).

Cons:

• poor system monitoring section.

The board's specific features:

• middling overclocking results;
• on the rear panel, there is a SerialATA II port; no LPT port and no COM ports.
• buttons for system start-up and reset.