Something old
Take a few seconds to ponder the ECS PF88 Extreme's layout. For all intents and purposes, barring the extra-long connector (hint, hint) running through the middle of the board, it's a regular LGA775-supporting board. In fact, with 2 x16 PCI-Express slots you'd be forgiven for thinking it's ECS' take on Intel-based SLI, but, as you may have guessed, the second, orange-coloured PCI-Express x16 slot is reserved for something else. Can you figure it out?
I'll discuss the merits of this standalone motherboard before detailing just how it can be transformed into a S939 board. In its basic form, then, the PF88 Extreme is a SiS chipset-powered PCI-Express LGA775 mainboard, with a SiS656 northbridge and SiS965 southbridge, linked together via a 1GB/s interconnect. There's plenty of room around the socket area, and it makes for easy mounting of Intel's fiddly LGA775 reference coolers. What's more, unlike Intel, the SiS656 supports the newest iteration of dual-core Pentium CPUs immediately.
LGA775's designed to run with DDR2 memory in mind. The PF88 Extreme carries the usual 4 DIMM slots that offer dual-channel bandwidth by populating same-coloured slots (or all 4, for that matter). Right off the bat, the PF88's SiS656 northbridge, located just to the left of the CPU socket, supports dual-channel DDR2-533 and DDR2-667, bringing it in line with Intel's i9xx models. The northbridge also supports the first orange-coloured PCI-Express x16 slot, just to the left. Unlike most retail Intel 925-series, however, ECS/SiS implement 2 IDE ATA133 ports, great if you're still using a bunch of older hard drives and/or optical devices. A 24-pin EPS 12v power connector is also something that we see on the majority of Intel boards. Indeed, thus far, and not looking to the left, this could quite easily be another generic i925XE we're reviewing.
Coming on down the board and steadfastedly ignoring the two BIOS chips (another hint), the SiS965 southbridge is a solid companion to the PCI-Express SiS656 northbridge. SiS integrates 4 independent SATA ports that can be setup in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and JBOD configurations. Further, continuing the PCI-Express theme, it supports 2 x1 lanes. Amongst other notables, the '965 features 8-channel sound, albeit only AC'97, 8 USB2.0 ports, 6 PCI slots, and a Gigabit Ethernet MAC. SiS also has another southbridge, imaginatively titled SiS966, that supports high-definition audio, and it may well be included in a board revision.
More SATA goodness is to be found via the use of Silicon Image's Sil3132 controller. As the name implies, it supports 2 ports, red on the PF88 Extreme, and rides off the preferred x1 PCI-Express lane. I've bemoaned the lack of PCI-Express peripherals in the past, so it's nice to see ECS specify it instead of a regular PCI-based 3112. It also gains points by supporting SATA2, and by consequence, Native Command Queuing (not present in SiS965). Software RAID 0 and RAID 1 are also available, as is RAID 5 and RAID 10 if run with the optional port multiplier.
Other feature goodies include 2-port FireWire (VIA6307), 3 PCI slots, 8-channel sound routed through Realtek's trusty ALC850 CODEC, and a Marvell physical layer that serves as another routing device for the SiS965's Gigabit Ethernet MAC.
The I/O section reflects the feature-set well. There's 4 USB2.0 (another 4 available via on-board headers), a single FireWire 1394a port, RJ-45 for Gigabit Ethernet, 2 Serial ports, and 6 speaker ports that combine to offer 8-channel sound. Given the PF88 Extreme's aggressive pricing of only £65 including VAT and the decent feature-set and layout on offer, ECS would already be on to a winner. But there's more, oh so much more to it.
