ECS C19-A SLI XE Motherboard

The MCP51 Southbridge is NVIDIA's answer to Intels ICH7R. The MCP51 lies underneath of the silver heatsink. Support for SATAII 3GB/s and NCQ(Native Command Queing) allows users to run the latest and fastest SATA HDD. MediaShield Storage offers a full line of RAID configurations including 0, 1, 5 and 0+1. Support for a total of four(4) Serial ATA and Four(4) PATA devies ensures you can store and manage all the data you wish!

PCI Express x16 offers an extrordinay 4GB/s of bandwith. The C19-A SLI XE will run TWO PCI-Express graphics cards in SLI, this almost doubles graphics performance over one card. PCI-E x1 slots are on most PCI-E boards these days, except we don't see many cards fitted for PCI-E x1, so when they do come around C19-A SLI-XE owners will be ready. The board also has three regular PCI slots. Connected into the PCI-E bus, in the bottom of this pic we see a black IC with an 'M' on it, this is the Marvell Gigabit ethernet controller which provides lighting fast LAN connection.

The hot-pink jumper we see in this picture is one very important componet, it is the Clear_CMOS jumper. If your board ever stops responding or an overclock becomes unstable, simply power down the PC and short the odd pin. This process resets the board electricly, back to default settings. Also notice the two yellow pin sets; these are USB connections for front and rear panel devices. The black strip of pins is where we connect the front panel LEDs, Power and Reset switches.

The C19-A is equipped with an advanced full set of ports in the rear panel, including PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, COM1, LPT, four USB ports, one Gigabit LAN port, two S/PDIF out ports and audio jacks for microphone, line-in, line out and surround sounds speakers.

The C19-A runs a Phoenix Award BIOS offering total control of your system, and sports a handfull of tweaks to boost system performance.

Advanced BIOS Features is where we find things such CPU Features, disk boot priority, and numerous post options.  Just about any device such as HDD, FDD and USB peripherals can be booted from, and can be set in order.

C1E labels a variety of CPU thermal throttling methods. The first method is adjusting voltage according to CPU load. The other method of throttling is reducing the CPU multiplier to lower frequency. Vanderpool Technology is a virtualization of each core in a dual-core Pentium D, essentially allowing the two cores to work independent of eachother.

Now we are going to move into what is my favorite part of the bios, chipset Performance Options.

Within Performance Options we can control options from FSB speed down to DIMM voltage. This is of course, where overclocking will be done. More about this on the next page....

One area on the C19-A that can be tweaked is the PCI-E bus.

The PCI-E bus is what carries graphics bandwith.  Default PCI-E frequency is 100mhz.  Raising the PCI-E frequency can effectively boost system performances.  On the C19-A we were able to take the PCI-E frequency up to 110mhz with no issues, no where near the max value alowed which is 148mhz.  I personally have not seen any board go over about 113mhz stable.

Intel's FSB is quad pumped. This means that for an 800mhz FSB CPU, the actual rate is 200mhz * 4 = 800. ECS allows us to overclock the FSB the easy way. For a 800mhz FSB processor, the FSB in the BIOS is adjusted from 800mhz on up. We will see how far the C19-A overclocked in the next pages of our review.

In order to adjust memory timings on the C19 we have to enable 'Expert' mode. From there we have full control over memory timings. Many times DDR2 is not SPD programmed to run it's rated timings so we must set these manually. This is an advanced feature and if done wrong can damage componets or cause the system to malfunction.

Vcore is the voltage that goes to the CPU. A CPU will operate at it's default vcore under normal circumstances. The onlytime one should adjust Vcore is when overclocking the CPU. The C19-A allows us to adjust VCore from default up to 1.6v, which is enough to push todays processors quite far. The C19 allows us to adjust VCore in small increments of about .0125v. Default VCore for Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors is 1.25-1.4v.

Todays DDR2 is capabable of reaching very high frequencies. The JEDEC voltage standard for DDR2 is around 1.9v. That said, some DDR2 can greatly benefit from a bit of a voltage boost when overclocking. In these cases the C19-A allows us to raise DIMM voltage up to 2.2v. **We do caution you that giving your memory any more voltage then it's rated can cause permanent damage to components.

Next we pushed the FSB high as possible.

We were unable to raise the FSB any higher then was achieved with Auto settings. The ECS 945G-M3 was limited because the VCORE nor the DIMM voltages are adjustable.

The C19-A SLI seemed stubborn on the bench. It simply would not post our Inel 920 anywhere higher then 229mhz FSB, no matter what VCORE and DIMM voltage was set. I suspect that the FSB voltage is the culprit, because it cannot be adjusted.

CPU Benchmarking

Sisoft Sandra 2007 CPUArithmetic
SiSoft Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant)is a 32 and 64-bit Windows system analyser that includes benchmarking, testing and listing modules. For testing processors we use Sandra's CPU Arithmetic benchmark.

Everest Ultimate Edition 2006
EVEREST Ultimate Edition is system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. For testing processors we use Everest's CPU Photoworxx benchmark.

Cinebench 2003
The tool is set to deliver accurate benchmarks by testing not only a computer's raw processing speed but also all other areas that affect system performance such as OpenGL, multithreading, multiprocessors and Intel's new HT Technology.CINEBENCH includes render tasks that test the performance of up to 16 multiprocessors on the same computer as well as software-only shading tests and OpenGL shading tests on huge numbers of animated polygons that will push any computer to its limits.

PCMark05
PCMark05 is everything you need to reliably and easily measure the performance of your PC and determine its strengths and weaknesses.

3DMark05
3DMark05 is best suited for the latest generation of DirectX9.0 graphics cards. It is the first benchmark to require a DirectX9.0 compliant hardware with support for Pixel Shaders 2.0 or higher! By combining high quality 3D tests, CPU tests, feature tests, image quality tools, and much more, 3DMark05 is a premium benchmark for evaluating the latest generation of gaming hardware.

3DMark03
By combining full DirectX9.0a support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 Pro continues the legacy of being the industry standard benchmark. The high quality game tests, image quality tests, sound tests and others give you an extremely accurate overview of your system's current gaming performance.

Our CPU test yielded mixed results.  The C19-A does come out ontop by a larger majority in some test.

MEMORY BENCHMARKING

Sisoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth
SiSoft Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant)is a 32 and 64-bit Windows system analyser that includes benchmarking, testing and listing modules. For testing memory we use Sandra's Memory Bandwidth benchmark

Everest Ultimate Editon 2006
EVEREST Ultimate Edition is system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. For testing memory we use Everest's Memory Read and Memory Write tests.

Super Pi Mod v1.4
Super Pi is a program used by enthusiasts to benchmark system performance. Owned and maintained by XtremeSystems.org, Super Pi is as much a competition as it is a benchmark, with many forums cataloging users times in the 1M and 32M calculations. For testing memory we use the 1M calculation.

Sciencemark 2.0
Science Mark 2.0 is an attempt to put the truth behind benchmarking. In an attempt to model real world demands and performance, SM2 is a suite of high-performance benchmarks that realistically stress system performance without architectural bias.  For benchmarking memory, we use MemBench, an unbiased, synthetic benchmark that sweeps through more than 15 different, publicly available, memory copy algorithms to measure the peak memory performance of your CPUs caches and your memory subsystem.

From the graphs we can clearly see that the ECS C19-A SLI XE dogs the competing i945 chipset in almost all of the memory benchmarks.

GRAPHICS BENCHMARKING

3DMark05
3DMark05 is best suited for the latest generation of DirectX 9.0 graphics cards. It is the first benchmark to require a DirectX9.0 compliant hardware with support for Pixel Shaders 2.0 or higher! By combining high quality 3D tests, CPU tests, feature tests, image quality tools, and much more, 3DMark05 is a premium benchmark for evaluating the latest generation of gaming hardware.

3DMark03
By combining full DirectX 9.0a support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 Pro continues the legacy of being the industry standard benchmark. The high quality game tests, image quality tests, sound tests and others give you an extremely accurate overview of your systems current gaming performance.

Doom 3
Doom 3 is an "older" game that still is a good benchmarking tool as it highly stresses your entire system. For benchmarking we use TimDemo1 with the screen resolution set to 1024x768.

Far Cry
The HardwareOC FarCry Benchmark is an easy-to-use tool, which makes Far Cry video card benchmarking fast and easy.  In 2004 Far Cry earned the "Best Game of the Year" award because of its awesome graphics and gameplay. It was the first game with Pixel Shader 3 support, which later became a standard in many other games.  While the user interface is simple, you can actually change more details than you think. With its one-of-a-kind screenshot feature, you can make snaps from the same frame from different views. You can also use OpenGL instead of Direct3D, or turn on HRD and Geometry instancing.

F.E.A.R
F.E.A.R has been said to be a "Graphical Masterpiece" for it's amazizing graphics. It's use of High-Dynamic-Range-Lighting (HDR), and shadow pushes gameplay to a whole new level.

One thing is clear from the graphics testing, theECS C19-A SLI a perfect choice for a gaming rig. The nForce4 SLI XE performs very well with the ATI X1600XT.  As for the competing i945 chipset, the C19-A SLI XE wins by a larger margin in half of the graphics test.

Warranty & Support

The ECS C19-A SLI XE is covered under a 1-year parts and labor warranty against defects in workmanship and manufacturing.  Should you need technical support for you MB, please go here, fill out and submit the form.

Our Recommendation

The C19-A SLI XE is the first motherboard with a NVIDIA chipset that I have ever used. I must say the experience was superb. For the price of this board, which is about $80.00 USD, it is a wonderful choice for the entry-level enthusiast. The C19-A SLI XE preforms on par with much more expensive Intel chipsets, not to mention the support for NVIDIA's SLI.

-Price, a true bang for buck board
-Performance, SLI, on par with the big-dogs
-Layout, the board is attractive

-Included Accessories, few cables
-Meager overclocking ability

My final thoughts....The ECS C19-A SLI XE was a pleasure to work with. It functions well and will be the board I keep on my test bench for now.  This board, for the price is a steal. I definitely recommend the ECS C19-A SLI XE to any enthusiast who is looking for a performance on a budget.