W1zzard
11-30-2005, 08:46 AM
[pagE=Introduction & Features]
Introduction
I would like to thank Elitegroup (http://www.ecs.com) for supplying us with the tested motherboard.
The ECS PF88 Extreme is a unique motherboard. It offers users the possibility to purchase CPU add-in cards, called SIMA cards which allow to run a completely different CPU architecture on that motherboard.
At the moment SIMA cards are available for Intel Pentium M Socket 479, AMD Socket 754 and AMD Socket 939. Together with the on-board Socket LGA 775 this means that you can run any mainstream CPU available today.
In order to make the board competitive in price, ECS chose to use the SIS 656 chipset on this board. A chipset from SIS is a lot cheaper to purchase than chipsets from Intel or NVIDIA.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/shield.jpg
The SIS chipset offers the whole range of features you would expect from a modern chipset like PCI-Express x16 for graphics, eight USB ports and four SATA ports in addition to two IDE ports. For networking, motherboard manufacturers have to use a PHY chip which handles Ethernet. ECS offers Gigabit speeds here.
Features
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" class="resulttable">
<tr>
<th colspan="2">ECS PF88 Extreme</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Processor</th>
<td>Intel Pentium 4 LGA775<br />With CPU card: P4 479 Mobile, AMD939, AMD754</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>FSB</th>
<td>1066/800/533 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Chipset</th>
<td>SiS 656 & 965</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory</th>
<td>4x 240 Pin DDR-II, Dual Channel DDR 667/533/400, up to 4 GB </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>BIOS</th>
<td>AwardBios</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Slots</th>
<td>2x PCI-E x16<br />
1x PCI-E x1<br />
1x EliteBus<br />
3x PCI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>HDD Connectivity</th>
<td>2x ATA-133<br />
4x SATA<br />
2xSATA-II</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Networking</th>
<td>10/100/1000 Mbps - Marvell 88E8111</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Ports</th>
<td>10x USB 2.0 (4 on Back Panel)<br />
2x Serial<br />
2x IEEE1394 (1 on Back Panel)<br />
1x Parallel</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Audio</th>
<td>8 Channel Realtek ALC850 Audio</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Form Factor</th>
<td>ATX 293 x 305mm</td>
</tr>
</table>
Specifications from ECS
CPU
LGA775 socket for latest Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron D processor
FSB 1066/800/533 MHz
Support Hyper-Threading Technology
CHIPSET
SiS® 656 & 965
North Bridge: SiS® 656
South Bridge: SiS® 965
MEMORY
Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 4 GB
Support DDR2 667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM
EXPANSION SLOT
2 x PCI Express x16 slots
1 x PCI Express x1 slot
1 Elite Bus slot
3 x PCI slots
STORAGE
Supported by SiS 965
-- 2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices
-- 4 x Serial ATA devices
RAID0, RAID1& RAID 0+1 configuration
Supported by SiI3132
-- 2 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices
RAID0, RAID1& e-SATA configuration
AUDIO
Realtek ALC850 8-channel audio CODEC
Compliant with AC'97 2.3 specification
IEEE 1394a
VIA® VT6307, support 2x IEEE1394a ports
LAN
Marvell 88E1111 Giga LAN PHY
REAR PANEL I/O
1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
4 x USB ports
1 x RJ45 LAN connector
1 x 1394a connector
2 x Serial ports (COM1 & COM2)
1 x Parallel port (LPT)
1 x Audio port (Line-in,4x Line-out, Mic_in)
INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS
1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector
1 x FDD connector supports two 360K~2.88MB FDDs
1 x IrDA for SIR header
1 x Speaker header
1 x 1394a header
2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB Ports
6 x Serial ATA connectors
1 x Front panel switch/LED header
1 x Front panel audio header
1 x CD in header
CPUFAN/NB_FAN/SYSFAN/PWR_FAN connectors
SYSTEM BIOS
Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI
Supports ACPI revision 1.0 specification
FORM FACTOR
ATX Size, 305mm*244mm
[pagE=Packaging]
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package1.jpg)
ECS is using their typical black package with metallic highlights.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package2.jpg)
On the backside there is some information about features of the PF88.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package3.jpg)
The actual packaging box has even more info.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package4.jpg)
When you open the package, the first you will find is the motherboard in an anti-static bag.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package5_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package5.jpg)
The box with the accessories fits into the box very snugly.
Contents
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/contents_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/contents.jpg)
You will receive:
Motherboard
Users Manual, Manual Addendum
2x IDE Cable, 1x Floppy Cable, 4x SATA Cable, 1x Dual-SATA Power Adapter
IO Shield
Driver CDs
e-SATA Cable
Two case badges
[pagE=Board Layout]
Board Layout
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back.jpg)
Click here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board_fullsize.jpg) for a 3000x2500 high-res shot of the board (3 MB download), the backside is here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back_fullsize.jpg).
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cpuarea_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cpuarea.jpg)
The space around the CPU area is a bit small, near the connector area, where the black tall capacitors are.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/io_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/io.jpg)
PS/2 Keyboard, PS/2 Mouse, Parallel Port, Two Serial Ports, IEEE1394, four USB Ports, Ethernet and Audio. On the backside panel all common connectors are included, ECS does not use their fan exhaust system here, which we know from other ECS motherboards.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dimm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dimm.jpg)
The motherboard's memory slots have been color coded for easy dual-channel configuration. To run your memory in dual-channel mode you have to put the modules into slots of the same color.
Connectors
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/atx_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/atx.jpg)
The placement of the ATX power connector is fine, but the ATX12V connector for CPU power is in a bad spot. It would be better if it was closer to the edges of the motherboard, for optimum cable routing.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sata_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sata.jpg)
Six SATA ports are available for your harddisks. Four from the chipset and another two from a Silicon Image SATA RAID chip.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pata_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pata.jpg)
You will find two parallel ATA ports on this motherboard, for a total of four IDE devices.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/headers_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/headers.jpg)
The header for the power/reset switch is neither color-coded nor labeled. But it follows the common layout found on other motherboards. The manual also describes the pins and their functions.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fanheaders_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fanheaders.jpg)
Spread around the board are four fan headers.
[page=Layout continued]
Slots
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/slots_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/slots.jpg)
When you first look at the slot setup you can easily get confused by all the slots and the stickers.
The top orange slot will be used when using the CPU socket on the motherboard with a PCI-E x16 video card.
The purple slot (2nd down) is used with the SIMA CPU add-in cards which are available for Intel Socket 479, AMD Socket 754 and AMD Socket 939. When the CPU card is installed, the top orange slot will be blocked by the CPU cooler, so you have to use the orange slot below the SIMA slot.
Cooling
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/nb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/nb.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sb.jpg)
The northbridge has a small cooler, which tends to get VERY hot, the Southbridge runs all passive and gets only mild warm.
Chips
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/monitoring_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/monitoring.jpg)
ITE's 8705F is monitoring temperature, fan speed and voltages. It's one of the three most popular monitoring chips.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/lan1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/lan1.jpg)
A Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet controller is used for the Gigabit Ethernet port.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/ieee1394_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/ieee1394.jpg)
Firewire (IEEE1394) comes from VIA. Their VT6307 chip is used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/satachip_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/satachip.jpg)
The SiI 3132 chip adds an extra two SATA ports, for a total of six on the motherboard.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/clockgen_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/clockgen.jpg)
As clock generator the ICS953408 is used, which is a special design for SIS chipsets.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/audiochip_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/audiochip.jpg)
The Realtek ALC850 audio chip handles all on-board audio needs, like on most other motherboards.
[pagE=BIOS]
BIOS
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bios_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bios.jpg)
ECS uses an Award Bios.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_standardcmos_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_standardcmos.jpg)
On the Standard CMOS page you can change date/time, configure your harddisks and floppies.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advbios_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advbios.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cpufeature_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cpufeature.jpg)
Advanced Bios lets you change the order in which drives are tried at bootup and keyboard settings. On a subpage you find options to enable/disable certain features of your CPU.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advchipset_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advchipset.jpg)
The Advanced Chipset page has no interesting options, but on a subpage are timings options, which we will cover a bit further down.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_peripherals_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_peripherals.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchipide_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchipide.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchippci_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchippci.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_superio_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_superio.jpg)
On this page you can change disable devices like floppy, networking, onboard audio, serial port and the additional SATA controller. The subpage On-chip IDE Device lets you tweak your IDE controller.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_wakeup_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_wakeup.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pnp_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pnp.jpg)
Nothing special is to be found under Power Management and PnP/PCI Configurations.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_monitoring_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_monitoring.jpg)
The Hardware Monitoring page shows the essential temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. Options for dynamic fan control are not available here.
Memory Timings
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_dram_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_dram.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cas_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cas.jpg)
The CAS latency can be configured separately from the other timings. A small bug which is not fixed yet is that the TRCD and TRP settings will always be at 4, no matter what you set in the BIOS. For our benchmarks we used SysTool to change to x-2-2-x timings to get comparable results to the other tested motherboards.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_ddr128_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_ddr128.jpg)
This setting lets you to disable the Dual-Channel DDR feature. It might be handy when you use completely different memory modules, which can not handle Dual Channel.
[pagE=BIOS Overclocking]
BIOS Overclocking
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_oc_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_oc.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pciclock_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pciclock.jpg)
There are not many settings for overclocking here.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_fsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_fsb.jpg)
The FSB is selectable between 200 and 450 MHz, quite optimistic of ECS. It seems that there is a bug which sets the FSB to 281.4, if it is higher than 281 MHz, no matter the actual setting. More about this in the overclocking section of this review.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_memratio_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_memratio.jpg)
This setting controls how fast the memory will run in relation to the CPU clock. The setting 3:10 looks interesting, it is only available on the SIS chipset. Even if you run your CPU at 200 MHz stock, your memory will run at 666 MHz = DDR2-1200. I think it will be hard to find memory being able to run that fast.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vcore_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vcore.jpg)
The range of VCore options is laughable, only 0.075V extra? This won't cut it for overclocking.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vdimm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vdimm.jpg)
The VDIMM range is better, +0.15V is needed for many performance DDR2 memories to run stable.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bootmenu_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bootmenu.jpg)
This is useful boot menu pops up when you press a hotkey during startup. You can set your first startup device to HDD in the BIOS, and the rest to disabled (faster startup times). On the rare occasion when you have to boot from CD or USB stick, just use this boot menu.
BIOS of SIMA 939 Card
Since the SIMA cards allow you to use CPUs of a completely different architecture, a different BIOS is needed.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fidvid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fidvid.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fid.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939vid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939vid.jpg)
The voltage options for Socket939 CPUs are found under Power Management. Up to 1.55V for CPU VCore is quite ok. But...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fsb.jpg)
... the maximum FSB you can set is only 232 MHz. I assume that all the complex signal routing makes the add-in card a bad overclocker, so ECS chose to limit the settings here.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939ht_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939ht.jpg)
When overclocking, you may have to reduce the HT speed a bit. With the 232 MHz limit, I doubt this will be needed, but good to have it anyway. The 1000 MHz setting didn't work for us, no matter the clock speed.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939timing_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939timing.jpg)
Custom memory timings aren't really possible here with only CAS latency listed. Where are the other timings, ECS? Having a 1T/2T switch is nice though.
[pagE=SIMA CPU Cards]
SIMA CPU Cards
AMD Socket 754
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back_fullsize.jpg).
AMD Socket 939
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back_fullsize.jpg).
Intel Socket 479
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back_fullsize.jpg).
[page=SIMA Installation]
SIMA Installation
The installation is easy and well described in the manual.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima2.jpg)
Remove the old CPU.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3a_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3a.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima4.jpg)
Change the BIOS chips to use the right BIOS for your CPU. Getting the chips out is a bit tricky. But if you use common sense and not brute force even novices can do it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima5_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima5.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima6_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima6.jpg)
Install CPU, memory and CPU cooler on the SIMA card. I skipped the CPU cooler installation here to get you better pictures.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima7_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima7.jpg)
Remove ALL black jumpers, so that the signals are properly routed to the SIMA card instead of the CPU socket.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima8_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima8.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima9_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima9.jpg)
Put SIMA card into slot and connect the small cooling fan.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima10_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima10.jpg)
A big problem I see with this add-on card is that you can only use small CPU coolers. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 is the smallest cooler I had. Installing something like a Zalman CNPS7000 or Thermalright XP-120 is not possible.
What is really cool is that you do not have to reinstall Windows after changing to the CPU card. Windows will just work with the completely different architecture.
[page=Performance: Test systems]
Test Systems
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ECS PF88 Intel"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ECS PF88, Bios 1.0e<br />SiS 656</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 15 x 220 = 3300 MHz, Memory 1:1 = DDR2-600</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ECS PF88 AMD"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ECS PF88 + A9S SIMA Card, Bios 1.0<br />SiS 756</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-4-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 9 x 232 = 2088 MHz, Mem ratio 2:3 (=155 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "LP NF4 Expert"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR Expert, Bios 17/11/05<br />nForce4 SLI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ASRock 939Dual-SATA2"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, Bios 1.40<br />ULi M1695</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC-3200 Gold GX 2-2-3-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.10</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "Sapphire PI-A9RX480"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480, Bios 07/27/05<br />ATI RX480</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ABIT AL8"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT AL8, Bios 1.4<br />i945P</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 15 x 300 = 4500 MHz, Memory 1:1 = DDR2-600</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "AA8XE"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE, Bios 1.4<br />i925XE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X800 Non-Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 4500 is 15x300 FSB, Mem Ratio 1:1 (=300 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "P4 2.4C"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (S478; 512KB; Northwood)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT IC7, Bios 2.8<br />i875P</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 256MB Generic PC3200 2.5-3-3-6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X800 XT</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Antec TrueControl 550W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 3400 is 15x283 FSB, Mem Ratio 2:3 (=188 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=Performance: Sandra & Everest]
SiSoftware Sandra
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sandraint.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sandrafloat.gif
Sandra's CPU Benchmarks are only CPU dependant, so it is normal that boards of the same platform perform the same here. Small differences are caused by minor inaccuracies in execution time measurement.
Lavalys Everest
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestlatency.gif
Here we can see how big the difference between the memory controller in the SIS chipset and the competing chipsets is. Especially the huge latency on Intel hurts a lot.
[pagE=Performance: SuperPi]
SuperPi
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/superpi32m.gif
Given the memory performance, it is not surprising to see the PF88 not being able to compete with the rest. SuperPi is very demanding on memory performance.
[page=Performance: PCMark04 & 3DMark01]
PCMark 2004
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pcmark2004.gif
In PCMark2004 the ECS PF88 can keep up quite well.
3DMark 2001
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/3dmark2001.gif
The picture is the same in 3DMark, probably because the video card levels the numbers out some.
[page=Performance: CineBench & Kribibench]
CineBench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cinebench.gif
In Cinebench the boards are very close to each other, since this benchmark is very CPU dependant. Intel's HyperThreading technology makes the P4s take the performance crown here.
KribiBench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/kribibench.gif
In the software 3D renderer Kribibench the PF88 is tie to tie with the other boards, whether it is on Intel or on AMD.
[page=Performance: Comanche 4 & Quake 3]
Comanche 4
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/comanche4.gif
As in the other benchmarks, the ECS board is slower, but the margin is quite slim.
Quake 3 Arena
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/quake3.gif
[page=Performance: Audio RMAA]
Rightmark Audio Analyzer
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/rmaa.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/loopback_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/loopback.jpg)
We used Rightmark Audio Analyzer together with a loop-back cable to analyze the quality of the on-board audio solution.
Summary
<table width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:</strong></td>
<td>+0.29, -2.52</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Noise level, dB (A):</strong></td>
<td>-72.6</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Dynamic range, dB (A):</strong></td>
<td>71.1</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>THD, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.025</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>IMD, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.098</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Stereo crosstalk, dB:</strong></td>
<td>-73.2</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>IMD at 10 kHz, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.184</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
</table>
General performance: Average
The on-board audio performance of the board is ok, for the price it costs.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/onboardaudio.gif
Frequency Response
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fr.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Frequency range</strong></td>
<td><strong>Response</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">From 20 Hz to 20 kHz, dB</td>
<td>-6.55, +0.29</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">From 40 Hz to 15 kHz, dB</td>
<td>-2.52, +0.29</td>
</tr>
</table>
Noise Level
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/noise.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">RMS power, dB:</td>
<td>-67.6</td>
<td>-66.8</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">RMS power (A-weighted), dB:</td>
<td>-72.6</td>
<td>-71.3</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Peak level, dB FS:</td>
<td>-55.5</td>
<td>-54.3</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">DC offset, %:</td>
<td>-0.60</td>
<td>-0.31</td>
</tr>
</table>
Dynamic Range
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dynamics.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Dynamic range, dB:</td>
<td>+67.3</td>
<td>+67.8</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Dynamic range (A-weighted), dB:</td>
<td>+72.5</td>
<td>+71.1</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">DC offset, %:</td>
<td>-0.60</td>
<td>-0.31</td>
</tr>
</table>
THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/thd.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD, %:</td>
<td>0.0253</td>
<td>0.0292</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD + Noise, %:</td>
<td>0.0864</td>
<td>0.0868</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD + Noise (A-weighted), %:</td>
<td>0.0619</td>
<td>0.0643</td>
</tr>
</table>
Intermodulation distortion
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/imd.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise, %:</td>
<td>0.1066</td>
<td>0.0981</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise (A-weighted), %:</td>
<td>0.0796</td>
<td>0.0740</td>
</tr>
</table>
Stereo crosstalk
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cross.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>L <- R</strong></td>
<td><strong>L -> R</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 100 Hz, dB:</td>
<td>-69</td>
<td>-65</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 1 kHz, dB:</td>
<td>-72</td>
<td>-70</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 10 kHz, dB:</td>
<td>-65</td>
<td>-70</td>
</tr>
</table>
IMD (swept tones)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/imdswept.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 5 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.0881</td>
<td>0.0924</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 10 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.1726</td>
<td>0.1711</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 15 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.2952</td>
<td>0.2882</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=Fan Noise & Overclocking]
Fan Noise
The ECS PF88 uses no active fans when running without SIMA card, so it's a very quiet solution. Some SIMA cards have a fan though.
Overclocking
In the BIOS section we talked about a bug where any FSB bigger than 281 MHz actually becomes 281.4 MHz. However, the BIOS still thinks it is running at that clock speed. Which allows interesting results...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/6750_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/6750.jpg)
6750 MHz... but in Windows...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/maxfsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/maxfsb.jpg)
4221 MHz at 281.4 FSB. Even when using SysTool to change the FSB from within Windows by directly accessing the clock generator wouldn't work.
While the system did boot at 4221 MHz, the benchmarks were not stable. We had to drop the clocks down to 3300 MHz, a mere 10% overclock over the stock 3000 MHz.
[page=Value & Conclusion]
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
The ECS PF88 costs around 88 USD, making it one of the cheapest Intel LGA775 motherboards available.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Extremely cheap
Can run Intel LGA775, Pentium-M 479, AMD64 754 and AMD64 939
Gigabit Ethernet and 6 SATA ports for that price
Quiet, only passive cooling
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
BIOS bugs
Chipset performance not as good as competition
Few overclocking options in BIOS
Limited overclocking with SIMA cards
</td></tr>
<tr><th>7.5</th>
<td>ECS has engineered a unique board with the PF88 Extreme. Being able to run most of today's CPUs is very cool. But personally I do not see the point why someone would want to do that. Most users decide to use either AMD or Intel and will stay with that choice for at least one CPU generation. The Pentium M would be a great candidate for this board though, but performance will be limited by both the SIS chipset and the overclocking options available in the BIOS.<br />
During our overclocking tests there was not much to do to get more performance out of the CPUs we tested on. However, if you are definitely not planning to overclock, you might want to consider this board, because of its great price. You will have a hard time finding a motherboard with comparable features like six SATA ports and Gigabit Ethernet for less than $100.<br />
The SIS chipset is about 5% slower in benchmarks, for a Media PC this doesn't really matter. What makes this board even more attractive for a Media PC is that it uses no active fans, so there is no extra noise which disturbs your movie experience. The on-board audio supports Intel HD Audio, another good feature for a Media PC.
</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td></td></tr>
</table>
Introduction
I would like to thank Elitegroup (http://www.ecs.com) for supplying us with the tested motherboard.
The ECS PF88 Extreme is a unique motherboard. It offers users the possibility to purchase CPU add-in cards, called SIMA cards which allow to run a completely different CPU architecture on that motherboard.
At the moment SIMA cards are available for Intel Pentium M Socket 479, AMD Socket 754 and AMD Socket 939. Together with the on-board Socket LGA 775 this means that you can run any mainstream CPU available today.
In order to make the board competitive in price, ECS chose to use the SIS 656 chipset on this board. A chipset from SIS is a lot cheaper to purchase than chipsets from Intel or NVIDIA.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/shield.jpg
The SIS chipset offers the whole range of features you would expect from a modern chipset like PCI-Express x16 for graphics, eight USB ports and four SATA ports in addition to two IDE ports. For networking, motherboard manufacturers have to use a PHY chip which handles Ethernet. ECS offers Gigabit speeds here.
Features
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" class="resulttable">
<tr>
<th colspan="2">ECS PF88 Extreme</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Processor</th>
<td>Intel Pentium 4 LGA775<br />With CPU card: P4 479 Mobile, AMD939, AMD754</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>FSB</th>
<td>1066/800/533 MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Chipset</th>
<td>SiS 656 & 965</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory</th>
<td>4x 240 Pin DDR-II, Dual Channel DDR 667/533/400, up to 4 GB </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>BIOS</th>
<td>AwardBios</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Slots</th>
<td>2x PCI-E x16<br />
1x PCI-E x1<br />
1x EliteBus<br />
3x PCI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>HDD Connectivity</th>
<td>2x ATA-133<br />
4x SATA<br />
2xSATA-II</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Networking</th>
<td>10/100/1000 Mbps - Marvell 88E8111</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Ports</th>
<td>10x USB 2.0 (4 on Back Panel)<br />
2x Serial<br />
2x IEEE1394 (1 on Back Panel)<br />
1x Parallel</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Audio</th>
<td>8 Channel Realtek ALC850 Audio</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Form Factor</th>
<td>ATX 293 x 305mm</td>
</tr>
</table>
Specifications from ECS
CPU
LGA775 socket for latest Intel Pentium 4 / Celeron D processor
FSB 1066/800/533 MHz
Support Hyper-Threading Technology
CHIPSET
SiS® 656 & 965
North Bridge: SiS® 656
South Bridge: SiS® 965
MEMORY
Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 4 GB
Support DDR2 667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM
EXPANSION SLOT
2 x PCI Express x16 slots
1 x PCI Express x1 slot
1 Elite Bus slot
3 x PCI slots
STORAGE
Supported by SiS 965
-- 2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices
-- 4 x Serial ATA devices
RAID0, RAID1& RAID 0+1 configuration
Supported by SiI3132
-- 2 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices
RAID0, RAID1& e-SATA configuration
AUDIO
Realtek ALC850 8-channel audio CODEC
Compliant with AC'97 2.3 specification
IEEE 1394a
VIA® VT6307, support 2x IEEE1394a ports
LAN
Marvell 88E1111 Giga LAN PHY
REAR PANEL I/O
1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
4 x USB ports
1 x RJ45 LAN connector
1 x 1394a connector
2 x Serial ports (COM1 & COM2)
1 x Parallel port (LPT)
1 x Audio port (Line-in,4x Line-out, Mic_in)
INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS
1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector
1 x FDD connector supports two 360K~2.88MB FDDs
1 x IrDA for SIR header
1 x Speaker header
1 x 1394a header
2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB Ports
6 x Serial ATA connectors
1 x Front panel switch/LED header
1 x Front panel audio header
1 x CD in header
CPUFAN/NB_FAN/SYSFAN/PWR_FAN connectors
SYSTEM BIOS
Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI
Supports ACPI revision 1.0 specification
FORM FACTOR
ATX Size, 305mm*244mm
[pagE=Packaging]
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package1.jpg)
ECS is using their typical black package with metallic highlights.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package2.jpg)
On the backside there is some information about features of the PF88.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package3.jpg)
The actual packaging box has even more info.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package4.jpg)
When you open the package, the first you will find is the motherboard in an anti-static bag.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package5_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/package5.jpg)
The box with the accessories fits into the box very snugly.
Contents
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/contents_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/contents.jpg)
You will receive:
Motherboard
Users Manual, Manual Addendum
2x IDE Cable, 1x Floppy Cable, 4x SATA Cable, 1x Dual-SATA Power Adapter
IO Shield
Driver CDs
e-SATA Cable
Two case badges
[pagE=Board Layout]
Board Layout
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back.jpg)
Click here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/board_fullsize.jpg) for a 3000x2500 high-res shot of the board (3 MB download), the backside is here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/back_fullsize.jpg).
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cpuarea_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cpuarea.jpg)
The space around the CPU area is a bit small, near the connector area, where the black tall capacitors are.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/io_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/io.jpg)
PS/2 Keyboard, PS/2 Mouse, Parallel Port, Two Serial Ports, IEEE1394, four USB Ports, Ethernet and Audio. On the backside panel all common connectors are included, ECS does not use their fan exhaust system here, which we know from other ECS motherboards.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dimm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dimm.jpg)
The motherboard's memory slots have been color coded for easy dual-channel configuration. To run your memory in dual-channel mode you have to put the modules into slots of the same color.
Connectors
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/atx_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/atx.jpg)
The placement of the ATX power connector is fine, but the ATX12V connector for CPU power is in a bad spot. It would be better if it was closer to the edges of the motherboard, for optimum cable routing.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sata_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sata.jpg)
Six SATA ports are available for your harddisks. Four from the chipset and another two from a Silicon Image SATA RAID chip.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pata_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pata.jpg)
You will find two parallel ATA ports on this motherboard, for a total of four IDE devices.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/headers_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/headers.jpg)
The header for the power/reset switch is neither color-coded nor labeled. But it follows the common layout found on other motherboards. The manual also describes the pins and their functions.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fanheaders_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fanheaders.jpg)
Spread around the board are four fan headers.
[page=Layout continued]
Slots
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/slots_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/slots.jpg)
When you first look at the slot setup you can easily get confused by all the slots and the stickers.
The top orange slot will be used when using the CPU socket on the motherboard with a PCI-E x16 video card.
The purple slot (2nd down) is used with the SIMA CPU add-in cards which are available for Intel Socket 479, AMD Socket 754 and AMD Socket 939. When the CPU card is installed, the top orange slot will be blocked by the CPU cooler, so you have to use the orange slot below the SIMA slot.
Cooling
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/nb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/nb.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sb.jpg)
The northbridge has a small cooler, which tends to get VERY hot, the Southbridge runs all passive and gets only mild warm.
Chips
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/monitoring_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/monitoring.jpg)
ITE's 8705F is monitoring temperature, fan speed and voltages. It's one of the three most popular monitoring chips.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/lan1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/lan1.jpg)
A Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet controller is used for the Gigabit Ethernet port.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/ieee1394_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/ieee1394.jpg)
Firewire (IEEE1394) comes from VIA. Their VT6307 chip is used.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/satachip_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/satachip.jpg)
The SiI 3132 chip adds an extra two SATA ports, for a total of six on the motherboard.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/clockgen_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/clockgen.jpg)
As clock generator the ICS953408 is used, which is a special design for SIS chipsets.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/audiochip_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/audiochip.jpg)
The Realtek ALC850 audio chip handles all on-board audio needs, like on most other motherboards.
[pagE=BIOS]
BIOS
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bios_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bios.jpg)
ECS uses an Award Bios.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_standardcmos_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_standardcmos.jpg)
On the Standard CMOS page you can change date/time, configure your harddisks and floppies.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advbios_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advbios.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cpufeature_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cpufeature.jpg)
Advanced Bios lets you change the order in which drives are tried at bootup and keyboard settings. On a subpage you find options to enable/disable certain features of your CPU.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advchipset_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_advchipset.jpg)
The Advanced Chipset page has no interesting options, but on a subpage are timings options, which we will cover a bit further down.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_peripherals_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_peripherals.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchipide_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchipide.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchippci_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_onchippci.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_superio_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_superio.jpg)
On this page you can change disable devices like floppy, networking, onboard audio, serial port and the additional SATA controller. The subpage On-chip IDE Device lets you tweak your IDE controller.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_wakeup_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_power_wakeup.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pnp_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pnp.jpg)
Nothing special is to be found under Power Management and PnP/PCI Configurations.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_monitoring_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_monitoring.jpg)
The Hardware Monitoring page shows the essential temperatures, fan speeds and voltages. Options for dynamic fan control are not available here.
Memory Timings
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_dram_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_dram.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cas_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_cas.jpg)
The CAS latency can be configured separately from the other timings. A small bug which is not fixed yet is that the TRCD and TRP settings will always be at 4, no matter what you set in the BIOS. For our benchmarks we used SysTool to change to x-2-2-x timings to get comparable results to the other tested motherboards.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_ddr128_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_ddr128.jpg)
This setting lets you to disable the Dual-Channel DDR feature. It might be handy when you use completely different memory modules, which can not handle Dual Channel.
[pagE=BIOS Overclocking]
BIOS Overclocking
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_oc_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_oc.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pciclock_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_pciclock.jpg)
There are not many settings for overclocking here.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_fsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_fsb.jpg)
The FSB is selectable between 200 and 450 MHz, quite optimistic of ECS. It seems that there is a bug which sets the FSB to 281.4, if it is higher than 281 MHz, no matter the actual setting. More about this in the overclocking section of this review.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_memratio_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_memratio.jpg)
This setting controls how fast the memory will run in relation to the CPU clock. The setting 3:10 looks interesting, it is only available on the SIS chipset. Even if you run your CPU at 200 MHz stock, your memory will run at 666 MHz = DDR2-1200. I think it will be hard to find memory being able to run that fast.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vcore_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vcore.jpg)
The range of VCore options is laughable, only 0.075V extra? This won't cut it for overclocking.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vdimm_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_vdimm.jpg)
The VDIMM range is better, +0.15V is needed for many performance DDR2 memories to run stable.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bootmenu_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_bootmenu.jpg)
This is useful boot menu pops up when you press a hotkey during startup. You can set your first startup device to HDD in the BIOS, and the rest to disabled (faster startup times). On the rare occasion when you have to boot from CD or USB stick, just use this boot menu.
BIOS of SIMA 939 Card
Since the SIMA cards allow you to use CPUs of a completely different architecture, a different BIOS is needed.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fidvid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fidvid.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fid.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939vid_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939vid.jpg)
The voltage options for Socket939 CPUs are found under Power Management. Up to 1.55V for CPU VCore is quite ok. But...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939fsb.jpg)
... the maximum FSB you can set is only 232 MHz. I assume that all the complex signal routing makes the add-in card a bad overclocker, so ECS chose to limit the settings here.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939ht_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939ht.jpg)
When overclocking, you may have to reduce the HT speed a bit. With the 232 MHz limit, I doubt this will be needed, but good to have it anyway. The 1000 MHz setting didn't work for us, no matter the clock speed.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939timing_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/b_939timing.jpg)
Custom memory timings aren't really possible here with only CAS latency listed. Where are the other timings, ECS? Having a 1T/2T switch is nice though.
[pagE=SIMA CPU Cards]
SIMA CPU Cards
AMD Socket 754
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima754_back_fullsize.jpg).
AMD Socket 939
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima939_back_fullsize.jpg).
Intel Socket 479
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front.jpg)
High-res shots (2.25 MB) of the front (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_front_fullsize.jpg) and the back (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima479_back_fullsize.jpg).
[page=SIMA Installation]
SIMA Installation
The installation is easy and well described in the manual.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima2.jpg)
Remove the old CPU.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3a_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3a.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima3.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima4.jpg)
Change the BIOS chips to use the right BIOS for your CPU. Getting the chips out is a bit tricky. But if you use common sense and not brute force even novices can do it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima5_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima5.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima6_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima6.jpg)
Install CPU, memory and CPU cooler on the SIMA card. I skipped the CPU cooler installation here to get you better pictures.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima7_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima7.jpg)
Remove ALL black jumpers, so that the signals are properly routed to the SIMA card instead of the CPU socket.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima8_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima8.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima9_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima9.jpg)
Put SIMA card into slot and connect the small cooling fan.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima10_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sima10.jpg)
A big problem I see with this add-on card is that you can only use small CPU coolers. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 is the smallest cooler I had. Installing something like a Zalman CNPS7000 or Thermalright XP-120 is not possible.
What is really cool is that you do not have to reinstall Windows after changing to the CPU card. Windows will just work with the completely different architecture.
[page=Performance: Test systems]
Test Systems
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ECS PF88 Intel"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ECS PF88, Bios 1.0e<br />SiS 656</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 15 x 220 = 3300 MHz, Memory 1:1 = DDR2-600</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ECS PF88 AMD"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ECS PF88 + A9S SIMA Card, Bios 1.0<br />SiS 756</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-4-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 9 x 232 = 2088 MHz, Mem ratio 2:3 (=155 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "LP NF4 Expert"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR Expert, Bios 17/11/05<br />nForce4 SLI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ASRock 939Dual-SATA2"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, Bios 1.40<br />ULi M1695</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC-3200 Gold GX 2-2-3-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.10</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "Sapphire PI-A9RX480"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480, Bios 07/27/05<br />ATI RX480</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "ABIT AL8"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT AL8, Bios 1.4<br />i945P</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC is 15 x 300 = 4500 MHz, Memory 1:1 = DDR2-600</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "AA8XE"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE, Bios 1.4<br />i925XE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X800 Non-Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">HEC Power475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 4500 is 15x300 FSB, Mem Ratio 1:1 (=300 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System "P4 2.4C"</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="100" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (S478; 512KB; Northwood)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">ABIT IC7, Bios 2.8<br />i875P</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 256MB Generic PC3200 2.5-3-3-6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">ATI X800 XT</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Antec TrueControl 550W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">OC 3400 is 15x283 FSB, Mem Ratio 2:3 (=188 MHz)</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=Performance: Sandra & Everest]
SiSoftware Sandra
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sandraint.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/sandrafloat.gif
Sandra's CPU Benchmarks are only CPU dependant, so it is normal that boards of the same platform perform the same here. Small differences are caused by minor inaccuracies in execution time measurement.
Lavalys Everest
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/everestlatency.gif
Here we can see how big the difference between the memory controller in the SIS chipset and the competing chipsets is. Especially the huge latency on Intel hurts a lot.
[pagE=Performance: SuperPi]
SuperPi
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/superpi32m.gif
Given the memory performance, it is not surprising to see the PF88 not being able to compete with the rest. SuperPi is very demanding on memory performance.
[page=Performance: PCMark04 & 3DMark01]
PCMark 2004
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/pcmark2004.gif
In PCMark2004 the ECS PF88 can keep up quite well.
3DMark 2001
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/3dmark2001.gif
The picture is the same in 3DMark, probably because the video card levels the numbers out some.
[page=Performance: CineBench & Kribibench]
CineBench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cinebench.gif
In Cinebench the boards are very close to each other, since this benchmark is very CPU dependant. Intel's HyperThreading technology makes the P4s take the performance crown here.
KribiBench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/kribibench.gif
In the software 3D renderer Kribibench the PF88 is tie to tie with the other boards, whether it is on Intel or on AMD.
[page=Performance: Comanche 4 & Quake 3]
Comanche 4
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/comanche4.gif
As in the other benchmarks, the ECS board is slower, but the margin is quite slim.
Quake 3 Arena
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/quake3.gif
[page=Performance: Audio RMAA]
Rightmark Audio Analyzer
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/rmaa.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/loopback_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/loopback.jpg)
We used Rightmark Audio Analyzer together with a loop-back cable to analyze the quality of the on-board audio solution.
Summary
<table width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:</strong></td>
<td>+0.29, -2.52</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Noise level, dB (A):</strong></td>
<td>-72.6</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Dynamic range, dB (A):</strong></td>
<td>71.1</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>THD, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.025</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>IMD, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.098</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>Stereo crosstalk, dB:</strong></td>
<td>-73.2</td>
<td>Good</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<td bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="left"><strong>IMD at 10 kHz, %:</strong></td>
<td>0.184</td>
<td>Average</td>
</tr>
</table>
General performance: Average
The on-board audio performance of the board is ok, for the price it costs.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/onboardaudio.gif
Frequency Response
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/fr.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Frequency range</strong></td>
<td><strong>Response</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">From 20 Hz to 20 kHz, dB</td>
<td>-6.55, +0.29</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">From 40 Hz to 15 kHz, dB</td>
<td>-2.52, +0.29</td>
</tr>
</table>
Noise Level
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/noise.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">RMS power, dB:</td>
<td>-67.6</td>
<td>-66.8</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">RMS power (A-weighted), dB:</td>
<td>-72.6</td>
<td>-71.3</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Peak level, dB FS:</td>
<td>-55.5</td>
<td>-54.3</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">DC offset, %:</td>
<td>-0.60</td>
<td>-0.31</td>
</tr>
</table>
Dynamic Range
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/dynamics.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Dynamic range, dB:</td>
<td>+67.3</td>
<td>+67.8</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Dynamic range (A-weighted), dB:</td>
<td>+72.5</td>
<td>+71.1</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">DC offset, %:</td>
<td>-0.60</td>
<td>-0.31</td>
</tr>
</table>
THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/thd.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD, %:</td>
<td>0.0253</td>
<td>0.0292</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD + Noise, %:</td>
<td>0.0864</td>
<td>0.0868</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">THD + Noise (A-weighted), %:</td>
<td>0.0619</td>
<td>0.0643</td>
</tr>
</table>
Intermodulation distortion
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/imd.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise, %:</td>
<td>0.1066</td>
<td>0.0981</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise (A-weighted), %:</td>
<td>0.0796</td>
<td>0.0740</td>
</tr>
</table>
Stereo crosstalk
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/cross.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>L <- R</strong></td>
<td><strong>L -> R</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 100 Hz, dB:</td>
<td>-69</td>
<td>-65</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 1 kHz, dB:</td>
<td>-72</td>
<td>-70</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">Crosstalk at 10 kHz, dB:</td>
<td>-65</td>
<td>-70</td>
</tr>
</table>
IMD (swept tones)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/imdswept.png
<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="1">
<tr bgcolor=#C0C0C0 align="center">
<td align="left"><strong>Parameter</strong></td>
<td><strong>Left</strong></td>
<td><strong>Right</strong></td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 5 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.0881</td>
<td>0.0924</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 10 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.1726</td>
<td>0.1711</td>
</tr>
<tr align="center"><td align="left">IMD + Noise at 15 kHz, %:</td>
<td>0.2952</td>
<td>0.2882</td>
</tr>
</table>
[page=Fan Noise & Overclocking]
Fan Noise
The ECS PF88 uses no active fans when running without SIMA card, so it's a very quiet solution. Some SIMA cards have a fan though.
Overclocking
In the BIOS section we talked about a bug where any FSB bigger than 281 MHz actually becomes 281.4 MHz. However, the BIOS still thinks it is running at that clock speed. Which allows interesting results...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/6750_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/6750.jpg)
6750 MHz... but in Windows...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/maxfsb_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ECS/PF88/images/maxfsb.jpg)
4221 MHz at 281.4 FSB. Even when using SysTool to change the FSB from within Windows by directly accessing the clock generator wouldn't work.
While the system did boot at 4221 MHz, the benchmarks were not stable. We had to drop the clocks down to 3300 MHz, a mere 10% overclock over the stock 3000 MHz.
[page=Value & Conclusion]
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
The ECS PF88 costs around 88 USD, making it one of the cheapest Intel LGA775 motherboards available.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Extremely cheap
Can run Intel LGA775, Pentium-M 479, AMD64 754 and AMD64 939
Gigabit Ethernet and 6 SATA ports for that price
Quiet, only passive cooling
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
BIOS bugs
Chipset performance not as good as competition
Few overclocking options in BIOS
Limited overclocking with SIMA cards
</td></tr>
<tr><th>7.5</th>
<td>ECS has engineered a unique board with the PF88 Extreme. Being able to run most of today's CPUs is very cool. But personally I do not see the point why someone would want to do that. Most users decide to use either AMD or Intel and will stay with that choice for at least one CPU generation. The Pentium M would be a great candidate for this board though, but performance will be limited by both the SIS chipset and the overclocking options available in the BIOS.<br />
During our overclocking tests there was not much to do to get more performance out of the CPUs we tested on. However, if you are definitely not planning to overclock, you might want to consider this board, because of its great price. You will have a hard time finding a motherboard with comparable features like six SATA ports and Gigabit Ethernet for less than $100.<br />
The SIS chipset is about 5% slower in benchmarks, for a Media PC this doesn't really matter. What makes this board even more attractive for a Media PC is that it uses no active fans, so there is no extra noise which disturbs your movie experience. The on-board audio supports Intel HD Audio, another good feature for a Media PC.
</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td></td></tr>
</table>