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ECS C19-A SLI


Date
: 05/29/06 – 03:42:30 AM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: ECS USA

Price
: $74.99 USD NewEgg / $104.42 CDN NCIX

Where exactly should I start with this review? I mean, this board is made by ECS and that itself says a lot. ECS has recently become a powerhouse releasing a number of high performance low cost motherboards. Our last ECS review was on the KA1 MVP and after a quick little BIOS update, it turned out to be a great little overclocker. Will this luck hold up with the C19-A SLI?

If the story about ECS isn't enough, we also have the fact that this is an nVidia Socket 775 motherboard. While Intel essentially had a monopoly on the Intel motherboard chipsets, nVidia has entered the market and with the Foxconn NF4SK8AA 8EKRS we saw it was far superior to the Intel chipsets.

ECS is coming into this review with some high expectations as a budget board. Will it perform? It's time to find out!

Page 2 : Package

ECS shipped the C19-A in its retail form. A very large warrior's head is staring directly at you…perhaps hypnotizing you so you'll buy the motherboard.

Clearly visible on the top of box beside the product name is the fact that the C19-A supports a front side bus of 1066Mhz. For most people, this will only be achieved through overclocking for most people as a 1066 processor is extremely expensive. Off to the bottom left are a few features supported by the C19-A. It also points out the fact that it is an nVidia nForce4 SLI XE motherboard – different than your standard nForce 4 SLI motherboard.

On the back of the package we get a great overview of the goods, including the specifications, features and contents.

No less than thirteen features are listed on the back of the package. These features include Scalable DGE, Dual Channel DDR2 667, Serial SATA up to 3.0Gb/s, nVidia nTune, MediaShield, PCI-Express, ActiveArmor, GigaLan, 10/100 LAN, 8 channel audio or 6 channel, IEEE1394 and overclocking capabilities.

The accessories included are printed on the bottom edge, these include a multi-language manual, auto-install CD, IDE and FDD cables, I/O panel, SATA cable and SATA power cable.

Three pieces of software have been bundled with the C19-A package, these include Adobe Acrobat, Promagic Plus and Wassay DPU.

The side of the box serves as identification and does not convey too much information about the motherboard. One side does have a UPC sticker which outlines the specifications.

Before we open up the package, let's check out the specifications and features.

Page 3 : Specifications and Features

Obtaining information about a specific model is incredibly easy on ECS's page. First up are the specifications.

One thing worth noting is how the specifications state "CPUFAN/NBFAN/SYSFANx2 connectors". For checking out the motherboard, I've only found a total of 3 connectors and that forth one would really come in handy. You can also see that is two Digital SPDIF (Optical & Coaxial) outputs. This will be really nice for those making this a home theatre PC that supports digital sound. The rest of the features are pretty standard and as expected with motherboards.

Looking at the features we see a reprint of what is on the back of the motherboard box.

There isn't a whole lot of information regarding the nForce chipset so I'll spit out a few words. The nVidia nForce 4 SLI XE is only an Intel supported chipset. It has a total of twenty PCI Express lanes and supports SLI, dual x8. According to nVidia, SATA, RAID5, ActiveArmor Firewall, Gigabit Ethernet and nTune performance applications are all supported. A complete comparison between the existing nForce family can be found on this image.

On paper, the board looks great. It doesn't appear to have many additional features that other SLI XE boards wouldn't have, however it does appear to be packing a fair bit without too much cost.

Page 4 : Package Contents

Once we open up the box are greeted with the accessories for the package.

Included in the box is a multi-lingual manual, a driver CD and a poster outlining nVidia SLI.

ECS has also bundled in an SATA cable with the appropriate power converter, a custom rear IO shield, a single IDE and FDD ribbon cable, an SLI bridge and a bracket to secure the SLI bridge onto your two video cards.

I'm sure many of us have seen what an SLI bridge looks like but, if you haven't, a profile view has been provided below.

At the bottom of the box is the motherboard resting inside an anti-static bag.

We'll be discussing the layout of all the components on the next page.

Page 5 : Layout

Taking a look of the motherboard as a whole, the layout is pretty good. Unlike the ECS KA1 MVP, there is no large metal plate displaying the product name and, more importantly, taking up valuable space.

I did find it quite odd that the two different IDE channels were separated by such a far distance. However, this shouldn't be a problem unless you were planning on installing an optical drive to that controller and placing the drive at the very top of your case.

We'll start exploring this motherboard from the socket.

The four phase power regulatory should provide clean rails to the processor and what will hopefully result in a great overclock.

Beside the CPU socket are the four DDR2 DIMM's and beside the DIMM's is the 24 pin main power connector, the floppy drive connector and one of two IDE connectors.

Your opinion may be different than mine, but I prefer my main power connector running perpendicular to the DIMM's. I find the cables don't obstruct the airflow as much. I am glad that ECS has decided to make the dual channel pairs DIMM's 1&3 and 2&4. This allows for air going over the board to take some of the heat off the heat spreaders. However, the positioning of the DIMM's is not perfect. A large video card can be installed on the top PCI-e x16 slot and it would eliminate your ability to change memory sticks without removing the video card.

On the above photo, we see a rather large chipset at the bottom right. While not clearly visible, it is a piece of silicon made by ITE and the model is IT8712F-A. As many of you know, the ITE chip is your sensory chip, it'll provide you with all the voltages and temperatures your system is currently being exposed too.

Moving along, we have 4 SATA connectors, a system fan connector and the front IO connectors running along the edge. Going across the bottom is the other IDE channel, IDE1. A total of four additional USB ports can be enabled.

Both the battery and the CMOS clear jumper are placed away from the edge of the board allowing for easy access. We can see that the South Bridge is passively cooled with a small heatsink.

While the system is in operation, this little chipset does run warm. However, it's not a huge concern as it won't burn your fingers.

Along the bottom edge of the motherboard we see that ECS has decided to go against the addition of IEEE 1394 (Firewire).

Tucked away in the corner is the Realtek ALC883. As you can tell from the specifications noted in the previous page, the ALC883 supports 7.1 channels and then the additional 2 channels for digital out.

The last controller running along the side of the motherboard is the Marvel 88E1115-RCJ1, better known as the Gigabit controller.

While some nF4 boards support dual network connections, ECS has opted to go for one as noted by the void beside the existing Marvell chip.

Moving onto the body of the motherboard, the C19-A has 3 PCI slots, two PCI-e x1 and two PCI-e x16 (or x8 when in SLI configuration)

If you are running in SLI configuration, it is required that you connect an additional 4-pin molex connector to the motherboard. For some odd reason, the tabs on the PCI-E x8 slots were ridiculously small, half the size of the tabs seen on other motherboards. This made the video card removal process
extremely
difficult and frustrating. I hope in the future ECS orders the larger tabs.

The last component on the motherboard is the north bridge cooler. This is small piece of aluminum is actively cooled.

I found that it ran incredible hot and could burn my fingers while stressing an overclocked machine.

We've covered the contents on the board and we have two more little things to go over before going over to the BIOS. The first thing to go over is the rear IO.

This is a pretty standard layout and covers just about everything you'd need. The last little thing to look at is the back of the motherboard. It's rather uneventful and to spare the need of loading another picture on this page, just click here if you want an image of the back. There's nothing special on the back but it is quite busy behind the socket. Personally, I think having fewer things on the back around the socket is better because you never know what crazy supports cooling companies may come up with. Whatever that maybe, you sure don't want them crushing any important surface mounted components.

Now that we're done with layout of the board, let's install the components and boot to the BIOS.

Page 6 : Installation

The C19-A is a standard ATX motherboard, as such it requires an ATX compatible case. I tested out the board on my Silverstone SST-TJ04 and it fit like a glove.

For the remaining portion of the review, I set up the motherboard on my desk with the components scattered around.

Apart from video card issues I stated earlier about not being able to easily remove cards, I didn't have too many problems setting up the board. You should definitely install the memory before installing your video card. I really would have liked seeing additional system fan headers, particularly since the specifications state a total of four while only three are actually available.

A full break down of the system components will be listed on page 7.

Page 7 : BIOS & Overclocking

Like most companies in the industry, ECS is using the Phoenix AwardBIOS. While our KA1 MVP turned out to be a great overclocker with a variety of BIOS options, we'll see what the C19-A has.

Setup Utility

Standard CMOS Features

Advanced BIOS Features

Advanced Chipset Features

A subsection called
Performance Options
is where you want to be if you plan on doing some in-depth overclocking.

A few of the features you can tweak include FSB Turbo or Mem Turbo. Overclocking begins by changing the System Clock Mode to either Linked or Expert. In my opinion, Expert is the way to go as it allows for more flexibility.

If you intend on adjusting the FSB speed, the range is 800 to 1300Mhz.

The memory frequency can be adjusted between 400 and 1300Mhz.

Additional memory adjustments can be made only if you select
Expert
memory timings.

The adjustments can be made to the Tcas, Trcd, Trp, Tras and Trc. You can also choose between the addressing mode of 1T and 2T.

Both the CPU and the DIMM voltages can be adjusted up to 1.6V for the CPU and up to 2.2V for the memory. I wish the MCH voltage could also be increased as that would improve the overclocking capabilities of this board.

The other subsection is the Spread Spectrum Control. Chances are you won't spend too much time in here, so let's keep moving through the sections.

Integrated Peripherals

Power Management Setup

PnP/PCI Configuration

PC Health Status

If you wish, you can set up a shutdown temperature. By default it is disabled, but I think you should definitely enable it.

Another feature is controlling the fan speed via Smart Fan Control.

When it came down to actual overclocking, my success wasn't all that great. However, you're mileage will definitely vary. Using my D930, I pushed the FSB from the stock 200Mhz to 231Mhz. It's a 15.5% gain that required absolutely no voltage modifications. I had also set the memory to operate at 660Mhz to ensure my Patriot Memory sticks were not the cause of the bottleneck. In our next page, I'll go over the system specifications and give you a break down of the benchmarks I'll subject my new system too.

Page 8 : Performance Outline

Let's first begin this section by giving you the specifications I'll be using.

To kick things off, I let the CPU stress with Prime 2004 for 48 hours at the stock settings. I then ran the CPU and RAM stress test for another 48 hours. After a defrag, it was time to benchmark.

In order to test the motherboards performance, I'll be subjecting it through a series of benchmarking applications. The suite includes PCMark 2004 and 2005, ScienceMark 2.0 Build 21MAR05, SiSoft Sandra 2005 SR3, Super Pi 1.4, Everest v2.20.405, 3DMark2k1 SE, 3DMark2k3, 3DMark2k5, 3DMark2k6, HDTach 3.0.1.0, and RightMark 3DSound. I will also test the gaming performance by running Half Life, DOOM III and Battle Field 2 at 1024*768. Each application will be executed three times and the average result will be reported.

Let's get to the action!

Page 9 : FutureMark

Our first batch of benchmarks will be based on FutureMark applications. Up first is PCMark 2004 and PCMark2005 followed by 4 versions of 3DMark.

FutureMark PCMark

FutureMark 3DMark 2K1, 2K3 & 2K5

FutureMark 3DMark 2K6

Obviously as the processor is overclocked, the performance increases. The gain isn't too big when looking at the results of the newer benchmarks. If we reflect back on my DFI RS482 results, the C19-A is superior. However, I wouldn't say the performance is twice as a good with this being Intel's "dual core". When compared against the 975x chipset based motherboards, the difference between the two is
very
little. However, the targeted market for the SLI XE would be in the price bracket
below
that of the Intel 975X. Once again, the performance we expect from nVidia exists at a price suited to everyone.

Page 10 : Benchmarks Continued

Moving on to a new batch of benchmarks, we'll start the page off with Sisoft Sandra.

SiSoft Sandra 2005 SR3 – CPU Arithmetic

SiSoft Sandra 2005 SR3 – CPU Multi-Media

Super Pi 1.4

While Super Pi primarily stresses the memory, it appears the Intel 975X has a slight advantage, shaving a few seconds off of the 32M calculation.

Everest – Memory Bandwidth

Everest – Latency

ScienceMark 2.0 – Memory Benchmark

If we look at some additional memory benchmarks, the tables turn and the C19-A takes charge.

ScienceMark 2.0 – Molecular Dynamics & Primordia

RightMark 3DSound CPU Utilization (32 Buffers/44.1Khz)

The C19-A uses an ALC883 while the Foxconn 975X uses the ALC882, does this minor difference make up for the lower CPU usage we see in the ECS board? Perhaps. A more detailed look would have to be conducted in the future.

At last piece of software to look at HD Tach.

HD Tach 3.0.1.0

The performance is pretty consistent regardless of the clock frequency or the total available system memory. There's very little difference between the two chipsets.

Page 11 : Gaming Benchmarks

While I fortunately don't have a pair of SLI cards on hand, I'll disappoint nVidia further by using my ATI card!

The results above look good and the C19-A is consistently above the Intel 975X. The performance gain from single to SLI varies depending on your entire PC specifications, not just the video cards you use. A higher performance is more likely to be achieved when a high resolution is used.

That wraps up all of our benchmarks; head over to the next page where I draw up the conclusions.

Page 12 : Conclusion

The ECS C19-A motherboard is great motherboard for those looking to build a new system without spending too much money. The performance compared to the 975X is slim, both Intel and nVidia flip flop between first place.

The overclocking is far from superior, but as seen in our KA1 MVP review, ECS will continue to update the BIOS of their motherboards as necessary. With luck, we hope to see this board improve in its overclocking potential as time passes. It's a stepping stone as ECS migrates from not being a huge overclocking contender on a powerhouse. I'm sure we'll be seeing more improvements from ECS to further increase their presence in the motherboard industry.

While the C19-A doesn't pack features like e-SATA or Firewire, it's not targeted to that market. If you want something like that, you need to double what you're paying for. So what we have here is a board offering a lot performance at the cost of some extra features for very little green back, a mere $75 for this motherboard! Take that extra 100 dollars you would have spent on a different board for a few extra features and upgrade something else! If you pair this motherboard up with the Intel D805, a pair of 512MB memory sticks and perhaps a pair of GeForce 6 or 7's, you'd have a really good budget gaming system.

What nVidia has accomplished with ECS and all other SLI XE motherboards is an opportunity for people to explore the potentials of a
budget
oriented high powered SLI machine.

Advantages

Compares to and beats the Intel 975
Very affordable
Packed full of standard nVidia features: nTune, MediaSheld, ActiveArmor

Disadvantage

Limited overclocking, however we said the same about the KA1 MVP and after a BIOS release, that changed rather quickly…let's hope for the same
PCI-e X16 slot too close to DDR2 and tabs are incredibly small!

Overclockers Online would like to thank ECS for making this review possible and nVidia for their support.