CeBit 2005: Need an LGA775 or a Socket939 board? Ask ECS!

We continue to offer you the latest information from CeBit 2005. This time you can have a look at the booth of ECS:

This is an inexpensive AMD Athlon 64 / Athlon Fx motherboard:

ECS K8T890-A (Main Series)

ECS K8T890-A:

• VIA K8T890 chipset
• Socket 939
• HyperTransport Link 1GHz
• Up to 2GB of dual-channel DDR400 memory
• 10/100 Mbit Ethernet
• 6ch AC´97 sound

Also note motherboards on the yet unannounced Intel chipsets:

ECS 945G-M (Main Series)

ECS 945G-M:

• i945G + ICH7 chipset
• Socket LGA775
• 1066MHz FSB
• Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
• Intel HDA and Intel Matrix RAID support

ECS PF5 Extreme (Extreme Series)

ECS PF5 Extreme:

• i945P + ICH7R
• Socket LGA775
• 1066MHz FSB
• Up to 4GB of DDR2-667
• Gigabit and 10/100 Mbit Ethernet
• PCIE x16, 2x PCIE x1, 3x PCI
• RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1
• 6 x SATA
• 8 x USB 2.0
• 2 x IEEE1394a

ECS PF22 Extreme (Extreme Series)

ECS PF22 Extreme:

• i955x + ICH7R
• Socket LGA775
• 1066MHz FSB
• Up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2-667 (for some reason the max. memory amount is halved, as a usual Intel 955x chipset supports 8GB RAM)
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet
• PCIE x16, 2x PCIE x1, 3x PCI
• RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1
• 6 x SATA
• 8 x USB 2.0
• 2 x IEEE1394a

Finally, we can proceed to the most interesting products previous undisclosed:

ECS PF88

ECS PF88 is a kind of a "transformer". Initially, you are offered a Socket LGA775 board for a usual Intel Pentium 4 CPU. At this stage its features are:

• SiS 656/Fx + SiS 965 (EM64T and dual-core processors)
• Socket LGA775
• 1066MHz FSB
• Up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2-667
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 3 x PCIE (one for graphics; one PCIE x1, purpose unclear; and another PCIE x16 named "Upgrade Slot" located at the non-standard distance from the board edge)
• 3 x PCI 2.1
• 2 x SATA2 (RAID 0, 1)
• 4 x SATA
• 2 x PATA IDE
• 8 x USB 2.0
• 1 x IEEE1394

Of course, the most interesting thing is that PCIE x16 Upgrade slot. If your Pentium 4 is already boring, you can install an Upgrade unit with a CPU or memory socket or even a chipset:

• SiS 756 + SiS 965 (dual-core CPUs supported)
• Socket 939
• HyperTransport Link 2GHz
• Up to 2GB of dual-channel DDR400

Now install the CPU and memory into the unit:

You can see that Upgrade unit heatsink is very close to the graphics card installed in a neighbouring PCIE x16 slot, but ECS promises to fix this issue in next revisions, so you won´t see it in the volume-produced boards.

Now the company demonstrates the performance of AMD Athlon 64 3200+ installed into the Upgrade unit. 3Dmark runs smooth:

It´s hard to pick out the target users of such hardware sets, but this is a really interesting solution and a successful marketing action. The company plans to sell these such sets for up to $150. At that motherboards and Upgrade units are to be offered separately. The shipments are to be launched in the late April this year. Besides, at the moment ECS engineers work on similar Upgrade units for Intel Pentium M processors.

Write a comment below. No registration needed!