Introduction:

   ECS has been very busy in the last year releasing some interesting mainstream performance motherboards. We've already reviewed the AMD/SLI board (KN1 SLI Extreme) and the AMD/Crossfire board (KA1-MVP) and both were very good values.

  Today on the test bench I have our 3rd ECS motherboard: the ECS C19-A SLI Pentium 4 (skt 775) Motherboard. What differs this board from our previous ECS boards is that the C19-A SLI is the first board from ECS to formally support NVIDIA SLI in an Intel Platform. Unfortunately it is only implemented as dual 8x pipes or a single 8x pipe for the PCI-e. A single 16x PCI-e lane should be there, but it somehow didn't make it into the board. ECS first stated it as 1x16x or 2x8x, but recently re-evaluated the specs and have now revised it on their website to the following:

• 2 x PCI Express x16 slot (SLI mode: x8+x8, single PCI-E is x8 mode)

    However on the plus side, this board supports the latest technology including being Pentium-D dual core ready, SATA-II, RAID, GB LAN, 1066mhz FSB, and utilizes the latest mainstream performance NVIDIA chipset called the nForce4 SLI XE.

   Let's take a closer look at the features and specifications of this motherboard, and I'll try not to put you to sleep with endless graphs of useless information :)

Company Profile:

ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems (TSE: 2331), has been a pioneer in designing and manufacturing computer motherboards since 1987. It was the first motherboard maker in Taiwan to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1994. Today, the company also designs and manufactures barebone and complete systems, such as notebook computers and high-end servers, for distributors worldwide

A Closer Look: