ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) has been in business since 1987, and they have manufactured quite a few motherboard in those 20+ years to say the least. While they do have boards designed for the computing enthusiast, their products generally offer some of the latest features and specifications at a price point that makes them have greater mainstream appeal.
One of their most recent releases, and the subject of this review, definitely follows this trend. The A770M-A (V1.0) motherboard is based on the AMD 770 chipset, and is designed to support the latest AMD AM2+ CPUs. Some of the key features of this new board include support for AMD Phenom processors, HyperTransport 3.0, PCI Express Generation 2, and a few configurations of RAID.
The promotional image above provides a quick overview of this new motherboard, and those familiar with ECS products should recognize the distinctive purple coloring of the PCB. Before taking a look at the A770M-A (V1.0) AMD 770 motherboard provided for review, let's look at some published data on it taken from the
ECS product page...
Features:
| Windows Vista Ready |
The latest generation Microsoft O.S., delivers better personal productivity and digital entertainment on your PC through its improved reliability, security, and performance. |
| High-speed USB 2.0 |
Delivers transfer speeds up to 480Mb/s for easy connectivity and ultra-fast data transfers |
| Gigabit LAN |
Gigabit LAN supporting a high transfer rate up to 1 Gb/s. |
| Dual Channel DDR2 800 |
Doubles the bandwidth of your system memory up to 12.8GB/s and pumps up the system performance. |
| Serial-ATA 2 |
Double bus bandwidth which provides blazingly high disk performance, ensuring your computing experience will be faster, more reliable, and completely with current and future hardware and software. |
| 8 Channel High Definition Audio |
8 Channel High Definition Audio |
| Dualcore |
Dual-core is basically two separate processors on a single chip. Those two processors can outperform single-core processors on most multithreaded applications while running at lower clock speeds and consuming less power. |
| Over-Clocking |
Maximizes your system performance by selecting over clocking options |
| ATA133 |
Supports Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 IDE devices, data transfer rate up to 133MB/s |
| PCI Express Gen 2 |
Doubles the bus standard's bandwidth from 2.5 Gbit/s to 5 Gbit/s, meaning a x32 connector can transfer data at up to 16 GB/s in each direction. |
| High Performance HyperTransport 3.0 |
Delivers increase in graphics and I/O bandwidth for smooth multimedia performance |
