ECS 945G - M3 Motherboard

The ECS motherboard is based on the Intel 945G chipset and
is meant for high-end business users for faster graphics and office
productivity. It supports the Intel Pentium 4, Celeron D and Pentium D CPUs on
the LGA 775 type socket. It has a FSB of 1066MHz and has 2 DIMMs so that you can
take up to a maximum of 2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM. GMA 950 is provided for onboard
graphics. The Intel graphic media accelerator 950 is an advanced version which
uses a 400 MHz core instead of 333Mhz  for better graphic engine and
capabilities. The expansion is provided through one PCIe x16 slot for graphics
interface, one PCI x1 slot and two 32bit PCI slots. 

Price: Rs 4400 (2 yrs warranty)

Key Specs: 945G chipset, PCIe x16

Contact: Cyberstar India, Bangalore Tel: 51266808 E-mail: ripunjay@cyberstarindia.com

There is only one IDE slot so you will not be able to
attach more than two IDE drives at a time. The board has built-in 8 channel
audio and there are 8 USB and 4 SATA II ports. You can overclock it to increase
the performance.

The system performance was tested using the P4 3.4 GHz
processor with 1GB DDR2 400 MHz RAM and SATA drive. The benchmarks used were
SYSMark04, PCMark04, 3dMark05 and Doom3 for the overall  judgment. Compared
to the Gigabyte 8I945GMF reviewed in Dec 2005, its ECS benchmark scores were
better scoring 216 in the SYSmark04 which is the highest so far. Using a 7800GT
graphic card, the PCMark04 scored 4770 and 6000 with onboard and the card
respectively. The 3DMark scores were 620 with the onboard and 7316 for  the
external card. In the same test, the Gigabyte scored 468 and 6410.

The Doom3 scored 8.9 with the onboard and 68.9 for the
external card, against 7.4 and 62.7 of the Gigabyte's. In the Business
Winstone benchmark, Gigabyte scored 34.3 while ECS went to 42.3, being better
overall.

Bottom Line: This motherboard will surely enhance
your office productivity with its unmatched performance.

Anubhav Verma