ecs

[Kraeoss]

hi guys

planning to get a mobo for cheap for a budget gaming system for slightly heavy gaming considering ecs what are their strengts and weakneses. if this is not a good board can someone reccomend a more suitable option.

thx

 

[FalseChristian]

What kind aof CPU do you want? Intel or AMD? Do you want SLI or Crossfire or just a single PCI-e x8/16 slot. Please, we need more info before we can help. Thanks.

 

[Kraeoss]

intel most likely seeing that is the better way to go generally. possibly sli, supports plenty ram for future upgrades, about 5-6 sata ports, and pretty

 

[Denithor]

ECS is good from a price standpoint and that's about it. Build quality varies from board to board (I've gotten some that were fantastic and some that were DOA) and they generally don't have overclocking options worth discussing. If you're planning to OC don't buy ECS, go for Abit, Gigabyte, ASUS, or DFI instead.

Regarding dual video cards, you can run two AMD/ATi cards in Crossfire on any Intel chipset boards (P35, P43, P45, X38, X48) that have two physical PCIe X16 slots. Note that the X38/X48 boards have full x16/x16 bandwidth while the P35's are normally x16/x4 and the P43/P45 are x8/x8.

If you want to run two nVidia cards in SLI you're stuck with an nVidia chipset board (680i, 750i, 780i, 790i). These boards can be quite expensive so make sure SLI is what you want before buying.

EDIT: And you'll get a lot more responses posting in the Motherboards forum instead of Video Cards & Graphics.

 

[Kraeoss]

ok i have 1 8800GT currently and may in the future wanna like go ati will the 8800 work on a cf board or not ? if not then i'll have to stay single card for a while

 

[hans007]

if you want a cheap board with overclocking get a foxconn.

most of their boards at least have voltage and bus controls.

ECS boards are even cheaper if you buy at frys with a combo. their reliability is pretty ok now, but they have a bed reputation from earlier years.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Originally posted by: Kraeoss
ok i have 1 8800GT currently and may in the future wanna like go ati will the 8800 work on a cf board or not ? if not then i'll have to stay single card for a while

Yes the 8800 GT will work on any CF board, it's when you want to add another 8800 GT and run SLI do you need an nVidia chipset board.