Intel 845 DDR Motherboard Roundup - December 2001

ECS P4IBAD

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Out of all of the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers ECS has the most complete Pentium 4 motherboard lineup. They have boards currently shipping that use VIA's P4X266 SiS' 645 and now Intel's 845 chipset; all with DDR SDRAM support. They will soon also offer a P4X266A solution as well.

Unlike the majority of the other contenders, the P4IBAD does not offer a wide selection of FSB frequencies rather just a predefined list of 11 frequencies from 100MHz up to 130MHz. Since ECS uses the same BIOS as all of the other manufacturers there's actually no reason why they can't have a similar selection of FSB frequencies from 100MHz up to at least 200MHz.

ECS did implement a fairly flexible core voltage adjustment list that covers all of the lower core voltages (perfect for Northwood) as well as those up to 1.850V in 0.025V increments.

Just as DFI and many others did, ECS outfitted the P4IBAD with the Avance Logic ALC201A codec. For more information on the codec and its advantages just flip back one page and read our analysis of it in the DFI section.

The P4IBAD does not feature the ATX12V 2x2 power connector that is required on all Pentium 4 motherboards. While you can run the board with a good power supply without using this connector, not requiring this connection means that the potential for someone to reuse an older powersupply not capable of delivering enough current to the processor is definitely a threat. We'd rather see ECS outfit their boards with this connector instead of assuming that everyone has power supplies fit for operation in a Pentium 4 system.

As was the case with the vast majority of these 845 boards, there wasn't a single problem we encountered with the testing of the P4IBAD.