ECS KN1 SLI Extreme

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/11/18/ecs_kn1_sli_extreme/1.html

 

good review. Other than the Lan problem... it looks to be a fairly solid board but I would still feel kinda iffy about getting it becuase of all the other well known and trusted names that are right at that price range as well. If it was a more competative price I think i would go for one.

 

2 40mm fans !?!?




thats got to sound awful

 

Yeah, it's quite loud on an open bench. It'd make sense if it had a heatsink above the PWMs and the 40mm fan running a little slower - it'd improve efficiency a little bit.

 

You can unscrew and completely remove the one on the IO at least but the NF4 one is to be expected, all NF4 mobos have that.

 

unless a heatpipe solution is implemented (like on ASUS and ABIT's latest boards).

 

Thats wierd about the 8X PCI-E mine runs full 16X with 6800 or 7800GT and 8X by 8X in SLI maybe there is a BIOS update you need?

 

No, there's no selector card so it's set to only run in 8x8 whether you have 1 card or 2.
Heatpipes not only have to be invented in such a way so that they dont infringe on patents like ABITs OTES but they're also expensive compared to a fan

 

There must be a problem with that board I checked 2 other systems I have built with it and they are all running nat 16X with one card.
I have read about 6 or 7 other reviews and yours seems to be the only board that does this 8X in single card mode.

 

Ive not got the board here now, but I checked NVIDIA's display control panel and it said x8 when in single card mode. There's no card or digital switch like the MSI SLI boards for selection either.

:|

 

Thats wierd it might be some sort of glitch I havent seen on this board before, so far I have had good luck with them and all mine run 16X.
Did you get with ECS about that?

 

Did i discuss it with ECS? No. Because it has no selection method - digital or card switch like normal SLI I assumed ECS saved money and didnt include one but just hardwired it to always be in dual x8 mode. NVIDIA control panel confirmed this to me and I didnt think anything more of it.

I didnt check it with any other drivers other than 71.89s, but what does your NV control panel say?

 

Mine says 16X with both the 6800 and the 7800GT and 8X in SLI maybe it is some sort of driver issue.

 

So why was this board not compared to any of these maufacturers? Surely that would have been more useful.

 

Because we arent provided with those boards. We have to use what we are given unfortunately

bigapl - im gonna get in contact with ECS and ask them how their SLI switch works because it's beyond me as there's no physical evidence of a switch on it.

 

nice looking board with less features I wouldent use. After fiddling with a lan party it's a very nice board but has so many features that the bios takes a few weeks to setup proporly.

 

We have a review of another SLI motherboard in this price range coming soon.

 

As a comment on the "Computational error" with the SLI/Non-SLI results, here's an idea on how to get the best result.
Run the same test 5 times, discard the top and bottom results, and average the remaining three. That way one-time statistical anomalies don't affect the outcome (As the worst and best are discarded to get a true "Average" result).

I realise this will take a little extra time to do, but it will give you a more accurate result, and a result you can more easily compare with other results.

Just my £0.02

 

That is a standard benchmarking practice as it is - ensure that all results are repeatable.

 

Because it's real world nothing is ever exact unlike a benchmark which is specifically designed for an uber accurate result. For things like the performance %age of WMP HD it's just windows cpu monitor is used and it's run for a while on loop and the most suitable average is taken. On other things that has human influence, like timing of the batch jpg/bmp encoding i take an average.