[OCWORKBENCH.COM] ECS KA3 MVP Extreme AM2 board (ATi Xpress 3200) Review Intro 1/5

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ECS KA3 MVP Extreme AM2 board (ATi Xpress 3200) Review Intro 1/5
Bluetooth 13 June 2006

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ECS KA3 MVP Extreme AM2 board (ATi Xpress 3200)

If you have been following our AM2 reviews so far, most of the reviews are based on Nf570 or 590 SLI chispet. Today, we take a look at ECS KA3 MVP, a serious contender for the performance market.

The ECS KA3 MVP is based on the ATi RD580+SB600 chipsets. With its integrated circuitry to support Dual PCIex16 slots which we discussed sometime ago (Read the article on ATi RD580). This chipset definitely is a serious challenger to the NF500 series especially the highest end 590 SLI chipset.

With the availability of SB600, ATi customers do not need to rely on NV (which bought ULI) for the ULI 1575 south bridge to be paired with the North ATi RD580. This will definitely speed up development of the ATi platforms pairing its own chipsets together for utmost performance.

The KA3 MVP supports the Socket AM2 Platform ATI Crossfire™ Xpress 3200 chipset that is the first unrestricted 2x16 PCI Express soluction.The board supports DDR2-800 and 6 ports of SATA II with RAID by SB600 and Jmicron controller on board. KA3 MVP also has GbE + Fast Ethernet supported out of the box. To add on, it has support for 1394 support and 8 ch HD audio.

With its scalable D.G.E PCI Express slots (Dual 16x slots), you can now run CrossFire on it for improved graphics performance or can use it for quad-display. The board also supports I.O.C, a dynamic overclocking technology which detects system load and instantly boosts frequency for overall performance. The board also supports eSATA allowing you to hook external SATA enclosures to the mainboard for data backup purposes. Top hat flash is supported. Just in case you misflash your BIOS, just fit the top hat flash on top of the existing BIOS and boot up. Remove the top hat flash and flash the correct BIOS to the onboard BIOS chip and you have recovered your dead BIOS.

Specification

CPU

Socket AM2 with AMD Athlon 64 FX/ Athlon 64/ Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core/ Sempron processor

Support for 64-bit extended operating systems

Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second.

Highly overclockable and robust Hypertransport interface

CHIPSET

ATI^® CrossFire Xpress 3200

North Bridge: ATI^® RD580

South Bridge: ATI^® SB600

MEMORY

Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture

4 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 32GB

Support DDR2 800/667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM

EXPANSION SLOT

2 x PCI Express x16 slots

1 x PCI Express x1 slot

2 x PCI slots

STORAGE

Supported by SB600

2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66/33 device

4 x Serial ATA2 devices

RAID0, RAID1, RAID10 configuration

Supported by JMB363

2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices

2 x Serial ATA2 devices

RAID0, RAID1& RAID 0+1 configuration

Support NCQ&eSATA & Hot plug&Port Multiplier

AUDIO

Realtek ALC883 8-channel audio CODEC

IEEE 1394a

VIA^® VT6308P support 2 x IEEE1394a ports

DUAL LAN

Agere E1310I Gigabit LAN controller

Realtek 8100C 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet controller

REAR PANEL I/O

1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors

4 x USB ports

2 x RJ45 LAN connectors

1 x Serial port (COM1)

1 x Audio port (Line-in,4x Line-out, Mic_in)

2 x Digital SPDIF (Optical & Coaxial) out

INTERNAL I/O CONNECTORS & HEADERS

1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector

1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector

1 x Auxiliary 4-pin +12V connector

2 x IDE connectors

1 x FDD connector

6 x Serial ATA connectors

1 x Speaker header

1 x IrDA for SIR header

2 x 1394a headers

3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports

1 x Front panel switch/LED header

1 x Front panel audio header

CD in header

1 x 26-pin LPT header

CPU / Chassis FAN headers

1x CPUFAN/1x SYSFAN/3x CASFAN connectors

SYSTEM BIOS

Award BIOS with 4Mb Flash ROM

Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, APM 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI

Supports ACPI revision 1.0 specification

FORM FACTOR

ATX Size 305mm*244mm

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