Review: ECS 915P-A - Mainboard - HEXUS.net

System Setup and Notes

Hardware

Motherboards

ECS 915-P, Intel i915P, LGA775, PEG16X and AGP Express, DDR and DDR-II
ECS PF4 Deluxe, Intel i915P, LGA775, PEG16X, DDR-II
ASUS P5GD2 Premium, Intel i915P, LGA775, PEG16X, DDR-II
ABIT AG8, Intel i915P, LGA775, PEG16X, DDR

Processors

Intel Pentium 4 560, 3.6GHz, 1MB L2, LGA775

Graphics Cards

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, PEG16X
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, AGP8X

Memory

512MB Crucial DDR-II PC2-4300 - 4-4-4-10
512MB Corsair DDR PC3200 - 2-2-2-6

Software

Windows XP Professional w/ SP1
Intel Application Accelerator 4.0.0.6211 (LGA775 boards)
Intel 6.0.0.1014 chipset drivers (LGA775 boards)
NVIDIA Detonator 61.76
DirectX 9.0b End User Runtime

HEXUS Pifast
Sciencemark 2.0
KribiBench v1.1
LAME 3.92MMX encoding U2's Pop album at 192CBR
Realstorm Raytracing Benchmark
3DMark 2001SE
3DMark03
Painkiller
HDTach 3.0.0

Notes

Due to the number of ways the 915P-A can be setup, and the fact the rev1.0 boards don't support the 3.4 Extreme Edition I prefer to use, I conducted tests in the following manner.

DDR vs DDR-II memory tests on the same board, compared to a DDR-equipped ABIT AG8 and DDR-II equipped ASUS P5GD2 Premium
AGP Express vs PEG16X tests on the same board
The usual HEXUS benchmark suite vs the DDR-II-equipped PF4, with the 915P-A using DDR-II memory and both boards using PCI Express 6800 GT.

To accomplish that, the PF4 was rebenchmarked using the Pentium 4 560 and 61.76 drivers, compared to the 3.4EE and 61.34 drivers used to review it initially.

Those tests allow us to see if the 915P-A suffered in any way due to supporting two types of memory. It also lets us see what the AGP Express performance is like. And then we get the full comparison with a PF4 running DDR-II, P4 560 and 6800 GT, with up to date drivers.