ECS KA3 MVP Extreme

The Back I/O panel is a reasonably standard affair with the exception of the ECS Cooling Accelerator. There are two PS/2 ports, a serial port, optical and coaxial S/PDIF out, a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port, a 10/100 Ethernet port, four USB 2.0 ports and six 3.5mm audio jacks for the on-board Realtek 8-channel ALC883 HD audio codec.

BIOS

The BIOS is a standard Phoenix Award BIOS with all of the necessary options for the on-board components. We used the latest BIOS from the ECS home page at the time we tested - version V1.0J, dated 07/07/2006.

The main overclocking options are located under the Frequency/Voltage Control menu; the highlights include:

• NPT Fid control (CPU multiplier) adjustable from 4.0x to CPU Max.;
  
• NPT Vid control (CPU Voltage) adjustable from 0.550V to 0.800V in 0.0125V steps and then from 0.800V to 1.400V in 0.0250V increments;
  
• CPU HT Voltage Adjust (HyperTransport Voltage): Normal, +0.05V, +0.10V, +0.15V;
  
• NB VCore Voltage Adjust (Northbridge Voltage): Normal, +0.05V, +0.10V, +0.15V;
  
• DIMM Voltage Adjust (Memory Voltage): Normal, +0.05V to +0.35V in 0.05V increments;
  
• CPU Clock adjustable from 200-500MHz in 1MHz increments;
  
• CPU Dynamic Overclocking adjusts the CPU Clock dynamically from 'disabled' to 30MHz in 2MHz increments.

The memory timing control options are located under the Advanced Chipset Features menu, most of the timings that you'd want are there, but there appears to be no control for the CAS Latency or Command Rate. This means that the memory will default to its SPD CAS rating and also default to the 2T command rate. It's a bit of an oversight in our opinion - hopefully ECS can release a new BIOS that enables support for CAS Latency and Command Rate adjustments in the future.

Other configuration options of interest include PCI-Express x16 slot power adjustments from 75-250W along with the option to increase the current supplied to the two PCI-Express x16 slots, the northbridge and southbridge by 10%. We think that the option to increase the power draw through the PCI-Express slots is a rather strange inclusion - the electrical noise and heat created through the traces will work against the boards' stability, as it is likely to affect other components on the board too.