Power-Consumption

The board does fine, but can't match the good idle results MSI DKA790GX provided. Under load the two boards are not far off. Compared to an Intel Core 2 Quad the Phenom II is very power-hungry.

Please note that other configurations may yield different results.




Conclusion

ECS did a fine job. As long as you consider this board as gaming platform it works well. This board should arrive with a €100,- price-tag after CeBIT, that's why the features are quite limited.

With memory prices so low we don't understand why ECS did not opt for sideband-memory. If they think, users will buy a graphics-card anyway, then a 790FX chipset would have done the job too. Also they saved some money on the components. While ECS told us the retail box will feature all solid capacitors, it will not feature all solid chokes. Hopefully they will add an HDMI to DVI adapter, because VGA isn't contemporary.

The results with DDR3 are disappointing. You need DDR3 1333MHz memory to match DDR2 800MHz memory. While DDR3 did get cheaper, it's still much more expensive than DDR2. Maybe AMD and the BIOS vendors can enhance the performance, but we could also not see that this platform is more overclocking friendly, because the AMD overdrive tool did not work. It would be a nice idea to upgrade that tool before new boards hit the market.

If you already have a DDR2 solution, there is really no reason to upgrade. In case you are considering buying a new system now, it's not an bad idea to opt for an AM3 CPU to be future-proof, but for the time being you can choose one of the many DDR2 boards which also will save you a few bucks.