ECS PF5 Extreme Tyldesley
The PF5 Extreme isn't particularly extreme in terms of its basic performance. But the PF5 Extreme does deliver speed, good design and a high overclocking ceiling, all for a very reasonable price. The following article has more to tell about features of the computer on the market in Tyldesley.
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ECS PF5 Extreme
Designing a motherboard is an incredibly complicated and technical process that takes a team of immensely clever people ages to work through. That is, until the point at which the board's appearance is decided, which, for the PF5 Extreme, must have taken only as long as it takes to say 'make it purple and stick some flashing lights on it'.
However, time not spent on the looks can be spent elsewhere and the PF5 Extreme is packed with goodies. It's based around Intel's mainstream dual-core CPU-compatible Northbridge, the 945P, which it combines with the top-of-the-line ICH7R Southbridge. The PF5 Extreme's Northbridge is actively cooled, as are the VRMs, but the fans are tiny and well behaved. The PF5's layout is very workable, and none of the vital areas is crowded.
The 945P is a PCI-E chipset, and the PF5 has two high-speed PCI-E slots; sadly, there's no SLI-style combined graphics available. You can simply run two cards at the same time and have a colossal four-monitor desktop. There's only a single 1x PCI-E slot, which is trapped between the two high-speed PCI-E slots, so it won't be much use if you do use two graphics cards.
The ICH7R adds support for super-fast S-ATA II drives with Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The PF5 Extreme has four S-ATA II ports running from the Southbridge, plus another two from a separate Silicon Image chip. It also has a single EIDE and floppy drive port, which is par for the course with Intel's chipsets, and four 3-pin fan headers, two of which are used by the board's own fans.
The PF5 Extreme isn't particularly extreme in terms of its basic performance. The 945P lacks the memory optimisations of the 955X, but when we tested it, we found that it competed well with 955X-based boards, as well as the Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards. The only aspect of the PF5 Extreme's performance we were concerned about was its score in Far Cry. At stock speeds, it averaged 53fps, way below the 60fps scored by the Foxconn 955X board, and was the slowest dual-core Pentium D board we tested for this issue.
The first 945P motherboard we saw, the Abit AL8, was an uninspiring overclocker, managing only a 220MHz FSB. The PF5 Extreme, in contrast, has some cunning tricks up its sleeve that help it to raise its game. Firstly, it clocked up to a very respectable 250MHz FSB, although this required overvolting the chipset by as much as the BIOS would allow, and running a sizzling 1.51V through the CPU. Secondly, unlike many Intel chipset boards, the thermal throttling built into Pentium D CPUs can be disabled. This can be handy, because it means that the CPU won't cut back and will always give you 100 per cent.
With a 250MHz FSB, our test 3GHz Pentium D 830 gained an extra 750MHz, meaning both cores were at 3.75GHz. At these speeds, the PF5 Extreme was slightly slower than the Supermicro 955X, which also hit 250MHz FSB, but it was still impressive in the 2D benchmarks. Thanks to the overclock, the PF5 was about 21 per cent faster in the video encoding test, and 18 per cent faster in Paint Shop Pro. Overclocked, the PF5 Extreme posted a score of 67fps, which is much closer to the other top boards in this issue.
CONCLUSION
ECS motherboards have a deserved reputation for being cheaper than their rivals, and this naturally leads to a reputation for making gear that isn't up to speed. However, the PF5 Extreme proves that this doesn't always have to be the case. Although it's cheaper than its rivals, it offers competitive speeds and allows for a good deal of overclocking freedom, thanks to its ability to ditch superfluous extra safety features. It does look a bit fishy - a purple PCB with winking blue LEDs isn't particularly attractive. However, the PF5 Extreme does deliver speed, good design and a high overclocking ceiling, all for a very reasonable price.
However, time not spent on the looks can be spent elsewhere and the PF5 Extreme is packed with goodies. It's based around Intel's mainstream dual-core CPU-compatible Northbridge, the 945P, which it combines with the top-of-the-line ICH7R Southbridge. The PF5 Extreme's Northbridge is actively cooled, as are the VRMs, but the fans are tiny and well behaved. The PF5's layout is very workable, and none of the vital areas is crowded.
The 945P is a PCI-E chipset, and the PF5 has two high-speed PCI-E slots; sadly, there's no SLI-style combined graphics available. You can simply run two cards at the same time and have a colossal four-monitor desktop. There's only a single 1x PCI-E slot, which is trapped between the two high-speed PCI-E slots, so it won't be much use if you do use two graphics cards.
The ICH7R adds support for super-fast S-ATA II drives with Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The PF5 Extreme has four S-ATA II ports running from the Southbridge, plus another two from a separate Silicon Image chip. It also has a single EIDE and floppy drive port, which is par for the course with Intel's chipsets, and four 3-pin fan headers, two of which are used by the board's own fans.
The PF5 Extreme isn't particularly extreme in terms of its basic performance. The 945P lacks the memory optimisations of the 955X, but when we tested it, we found that it competed well with 955X-based boards, as well as the Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards. The only aspect of the PF5 Extreme's performance we were concerned about was its score in Far Cry. At stock speeds, it averaged 53fps, way below the 60fps scored by the Foxconn 955X board, and was the slowest dual-core Pentium D board we tested for this issue.
The first 945P motherboard we saw, the Abit AL8, was an uninspiring overclocker, managing only a 220MHz FSB. The PF5 Extreme, in contrast, has some cunning tricks up its sleeve that help it to raise its game. Firstly, it clocked up to a very respectable 250MHz FSB, although this required overvolting the chipset by as much as the BIOS would allow, and running a sizzling 1.51V through the CPU. Secondly, unlike many Intel chipset boards, the thermal throttling built into Pentium D CPUs can be disabled. This can be handy, because it means that the CPU won't cut back and will always give you 100 per cent.
With a 250MHz FSB, our test 3GHz Pentium D 830 gained an extra 750MHz, meaning both cores were at 3.75GHz. At these speeds, the PF5 Extreme was slightly slower than the Supermicro 955X, which also hit 250MHz FSB, but it was still impressive in the 2D benchmarks. Thanks to the overclock, the PF5 was about 21 per cent faster in the video encoding test, and 18 per cent faster in Paint Shop Pro. Overclocked, the PF5 Extreme posted a score of 67fps, which is much closer to the other top boards in this issue.
CONCLUSION
ECS motherboards have a deserved reputation for being cheaper than their rivals, and this naturally leads to a reputation for making gear that isn't up to speed. However, the PF5 Extreme proves that this doesn't always have to be the case. Although it's cheaper than its rivals, it offers competitive speeds and allows for a good deal of overclocking freedom, thanks to its ability to ditch superfluous extra safety features. It does look a bit fishy - a purple PCB with winking blue LEDs isn't particularly attractive. However, the PF5 Extreme does deliver speed, good design and a high overclocking ceiling, all for a very reasonable price.
Author: Phil Hartup
