ECS KA1 MVP Extreme is ECS's first attempt into an AMD
CrossFire solution. Being a board in the extreme series, we won't be expecting
anything less compared to its other offering, the ECS KN2 SLI.
Based on the ATi RD480+SB450 chipsets,
ECS KA1 MVP Extreme supports 2 IDE channels and 6 SATA II ports with RAID 0,1 by
SB450 and Sil3132 chipset. The board also comes with 1 GbE, 1 Fast Ethernet, Top Hat Flash, 1394a, 8 USB
ports for your future expansion needs. The board provides a fan duct which also
helps to cool down the MOSFETs. The
top-hat flash allows recovery of Bad BIOS flash and DR.LED uses Fuzzy logic for
dianosing PCI slots health. There is also a Anti-Burn Guardian which has a
memory module alerting function.
ECS KA1 MVP Extreme's performance in
general is comparable to existing solutions based on NF4 chipsets when paired
with a single graphics card. In fact, it is a pity that ECS chose SB450. They
could have paired it up with ULi M1575,
that would make it support SATAII with NCQ.
ECS KA1 MVP Extreme's package is amazing compared to previous
offerings. Other than the common drivers disc, the bundled software consists of
Intervideo WinRip2, WinDVD Creator, WinDVD, Adobe Reader, DPU (Protect and
Restore files by timestamp), I'm Intouch, ProMagic Plus and ShowShifter. EzFlash
also allows one to Flash Update within Windows.
Installation of the board is pretty
straightforward as the board and slots are all labelled with bright colours. I
think unless you are colour blind, it is the one of the easiest to install.
Something I forgot to point out in my previous review of KN2 SLI Extreme is
that, the extreme series uses a kind of weird slot lock. As the lever is very
short, it is difficult to remove a graphics card after inserting it in.
The board has vast overclocking features.
In fact, it is the first ECS board that I see a large voltage range available
for Vcore and Vdimm. There are some issues with the board on hand and we are not
able to go as high as what the ECS people can achieve. Here is a screen shot of
what can be obtained.
Overall, I would say the experience with
this board is pleasing. The documentation needs more work especially on the
portion on Installation of CrossFire card.
