ECS K8T890-A

[AkumaX]

 

[Rottie]

It seems that no one like ECS mobo anymore

 

[Xelloss]

Well, ECS is a low-end manufacturer, so most of the people here don't bother with them, unless they get a really good deal (like me). Looking at reviews on Newegg, the K8T890-A is not a very popular board at all. Some of the complaints include crappy AGP support (lots of cards don't work right), bad layout, instability, no support for E4 stepping out of the box, and poor build quality. Most people who get these are probably getting them via combo deals at Fry's. Fry's has other combos though, so based on what I've seen at Newegg, I'd steer clear of this one. YMMV of course.

 

[Peter]

As usual with any board maker's pseudo-AGP slots, this one here too works with older, 3.3V-capable cards ONLY. Recent cards with 4x/8x AGP are 1.5V-only and cannot possibly work.

There are only two chipsets that do PROPER AGP alongside PCIE graphics - ULi's 1695/1567 combo for AMD, and VIA's PT880pro/ultra for Intel processors. Everything (!) else does PCI on an AGP slot. And they're all (!) keying the slot wrong, with the 1.5V tab in place instead of the required 3.3V tab.

No E4 step support means older BIOS, and that probably means your retailer is selling you old stock. Blame the retailer, not the product - particularly if they're offering combo deals of stuff that doesn't even work together as shipped.

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: Xelloss
Fry's has other combos though, so based on what I've seen at Newegg, I'd steer clear of this one. YMMV of course.

That's the problem; they've gone away from some of the better combo boards, like the ECS Nforce4-A939, instead of this VIA one

 

[furballi]

ECS NF3 754 is another good board. Mine is stable up to 280MHz with ClockGen.

 

[Xelloss]

Well, I just picked up an ECS RS482-M with a 3700+ from them. Definitely not an enthusiast board - I'm not expecting overclocking features. But newegg reviews suggested it was reasonably solid, so I'm going to give it a shot. And today they've got an RX480-A with a 3500+ for $180. I'm a bit tempted to swap for the $40 difference. Heck, that's a good deal for that CPU alone. Don't have any reviews on that board though.

EDIT: For anyone interested, here's a review of that RX480-A:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=6&id=1600

The RS482-M looks pretty similar, except it's a micro-ATX with less PCI-e slots (only the one 16x for the video), and less memory slots. I wouldn't be surprised if they behave similarly.

 

[o1die]

Thanks Xelloss for the ecs link. I was thinking of getting this combo, but it's $20 more here in Austin and I need onboard video, which this board doesn't have.