Introduction

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Over the last few months, a new player has entered the high-end motherboard segment, a newcomer whose name might ring a few bells. I’m talking about EliteGroup, or ECS for short, and a company that has been a leading supplier of motherboards for the computer industry for over 15 years. If you've ever worked for a computer OEM or a small system builder, chances are you've used a couple ECS motherboards within your tenure; as the company is the #1 shipper of low cost entry-level motherboards in the world.

A question that’s bound to be asked is why the world’s #1 shipper of low cost entry level motherboards would jump into the low-volume, high maintenance world of enthusiast class motherboards? The answer isn’t simple, but is part of ECS’ new global strategy that highlights and brands the ECS name to consumers.

Essentially ECS would be helping their money making high volume motherboard business by creating a solid brand reputation through high-end enthusiast class products.

With that said, today we’re taking a closer look at the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme, ECS’ nForce 4 SLI motherboard. Does ECS have what it takes to take on the offerings of ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and DFI? Join us as we take a closer look.

Closer Look:

You may recall that DFI, once a low-cost, OEM friendly motherboard manufacturer, a little over two years ago made the leap into the enthusiast sector, with surprisingly impressive results. At the ECS Editor’s Day in San Francisco a few months ago, we learned of ECS’ plans toward a similar approach, entering into the high-end enthusiast segment with a variety of K8 and LGA-775 motherboards.

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Board layout

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Color is of course always subjective, in fact your favorite color may even be purple, but for me, I’d prefer to see a darker color, like what we’ve had with the ASUS and DFI offerings. Another thing you’ll notice with the KN1 SLI Extreme is that it’s PCB design is less cluttered than that of ASUS and DFI, the KN1 SLI Extreme having a considerable amount of open PCB.

Besides the board’s awkward color, another aspect that catches your eye is the KN1 SLI Extreme’s neon green 40mm fan duct, installed directly adjacent to the CPU socket. Unlike DFI and ASUS, ECS has added an active-cooling solution to cool the board’s MOSFETs. Using a temperature sensor, we’ve noticed that the MOSFETS on the DFI and ECS boards were roughly the same temperature, so using an active cooling solution (that can easily fail) may not be that necessary.

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Testing Setup:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2 x NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT's in SLI
NVIDIA Detonator 77.77
NVIDIA nForce4 Forceware 6.66
2 x 512MB Corsair 3200XL PRO (2-2-2-5)

ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR
ECS KN1 SLI
Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI
MSI K8N Neo4 SLI

Windows XP with Service Pack 2
Direct X 9.0C
1024x768x32 Desktop Resolution

SPECview Perf 8.1:

To start our testing, we’ll be using SPECview Perf 8.1 to examine how the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme performs in 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, and Maya tests.

Encoding performance Page:: ( 5 / 11 )

Encoding Tests:

In our encoding and decoding tests, we're using the latest DivX and XviD codecs and encoding standard MPEG-2 videos. We're encoding 700MB videos for both. For our Winrar tests, we're decoding a 900MB Winrar archive.

3DMark03 & 3DMark05 Page:: ( 6 / 11 )

Next up we have our standard 3DMark03 and 3DMark05 tests, both running at 1024x768x32.

Kribibench:

For our Kribibench tests, we're using a realistic render and the City, Office, Plane, and Ultra scenes.

Gaming tests Page:: ( 7 / 11 )

Doom 3:

In our Doom 3 tests, we're running the game through a custom-made demo in the Mars City level. No AA or AF is enabled. We're using version 1.3 of the game.

Far Cry:

In our Far Cry tests, we're using version 1.31 and are running custom demos of the game's Pier level. No AA or AF settings are enabled.

HL2, UT 2004 Page:: ( 8 / 11 )

Half-Life 2: d3c171:

For our Half-Life 2 tests, we're using the game's d3c171 level.

Unreal Tournament 2004:

Four our Unreal Tournament 2004 tests we're using version 3355 of the game, and running the game's standard Fly By demo.

Overclocking Page:: ( 9 / 11 )

For our overclocking tests, we’re using Thermaltake’s heavy duty CL-P0114 120mm heatsink fan and are overclocking each motherboard through its respective BIOS to obtain the highest possible stable clock frequency. We’re using the same AMD Athlon 64 4000+ CPU throughout all these tests, with minor voltage changes to obtain the stable overclock from board to board.

We ran a 3DMark03 game test loop for 48 hours at our overclocked frequencies, so these overclocking results should be relatively easy to duplicate assuming you have adequate cooling.

The overclocking section of a motherboard review is often most interesting because it is where the true enthusiast class products often shine. Contrary to our standard test results, our overclocking results show substantial differences between the four motherboards we tested against the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme.

We can see with our test results that the motherboard that yielded the highest stable overclock was the DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR. DFI’s board managed to run our Athlon 64 4000+ processor 70MHz higher than that of the ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe, and 96MHz higher than the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme.

With that said, it’s important to note that both the ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe and the ECS KN1 SLI were actually able to surpass the 2.7GHz barrier in our initial overclocking tests, but as our 3DMark03 game test looped, our test systems would restart or shut off completely.

Ballistics Report Page:: ( 10 / 11 )

Pros:

Unique Features: The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme is the only motherboard featured in our roundup that does not use NVIDIA’s SLI switch to toggle from SLI to single-card mode. ECS also incorporated an exhaust fan on the back panel I/O port, helping to keep the board’s MOSFETS cool while pumping hot air out of your case.

Bundle: ECS includes the standard motherboard accessories, but adds a few unique items that set the ECS KN1 SLI Extreme apart from the competition. These extras include an Ethernet crossover cable, SLI retention , 3.5” mounting bay for the USB/Firewire bracket, an extra BIOS chip, and an external SATA data port.

Price: The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme is also one of the most affordable nForce 4 SLI motherboards on the market, priced at $115.

Cons:

Aesthetics: The ECS KN1 SLI Extreme is purple, a color many PC enthusiasts tend to shy away from.

Unproven track record: As we can see, ECS has done a good job of bringing an affordable, feature rich motherboard into the market. However, ECS’ support and warranty services have yet to be tested by the niche user base we like to call the enthusiast segment. However, looking at the ECS website one can see that they’re doing a good job keeping up with BIOS updates and end-user questions in their forums; we’ll just have to see if they keep it up.

Final Verdict Page:: ( 11 / 11 )

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