Today we are checking out a brand new Intel P45 based motherboard from ECS designed to deliver high-end performance to the masses. While this budget board costs roughly $100 US, it does have one interesting surprise in store for bargain shoppers that it not likely to impress. Since its arrival DDR3 memory has done little to impress, offering mediocre performance gains at ridiculous price premiums. So does it have any place on a budget ECS motherboard?
With more than half a dozen Intel Core 2 Duo processors priced well below $200 US, building a relatively powerful computer for next to nothing has become child’s play. Take the Core 2 Duo E7200 which we recently featured in our “Building The Ultimate Budget Gaming PC” article. This 2.53GHz dual-core processor features a 3MB L2 cache and has enough guts to go head to head with pretty much anything, at least for gaming.
Priced at just $120 US the E7200 really helps keep building costs down and in the past this kind of money would be lucky to land you a flaccid Celeron type processor. Even the big guns, such as the E8500 clocked at 3.16GHz, costs less than $200 US, which is amazing given that this is currently Intel’s most potent dual-core processor.
Also helping to make the ultimate budget gaming PC a reality are current DDR2 memory prices. Recently we checked out the G.Skill PI Black PC2-6400 4GB memory kit, which if you can believe it is selling for just $70 US. Yes, you read that correctly, 4GB (2x2GB) of low-latency DDR2 memory for just $70 US. The only problem that we are faced with now is finding an affordable motherboard that complements all this fine hardware.
Currently the more desirable ASUS motherboards sporting the Intel P45 chipset cost the better part of $200 US. Recently we checked out the equally impressive MSI P45 Platinum which would set you back about $170 US, which is really quite good. The motherboard that we have here today on the other hand is designed to save you even more money, as it has been slapped with a bargain basement price of just $100 US.
This motherboard is known as the ECS P45T-AD3, and like the other more expensive Intel P45 motherboards this version includes the ICH10R south bridge chip. In terms of features the P45T-A D3 seems to be fairly well equipped at first glance, and while it may not have all the bells and whistles of the more expensive boards, the essentials are all certainly there. What we will be interested to find is just how well this budget board performs and how much overclocking headroom it will offer Core 2 owners...
