ECS PF4 Extreme
| ECS PF4 Extreme | |
| CPU Support | All LGA775 processors |
| Northbridge | Intel i915P 'Grantsdale' |
| Memory Support | 4 slots, DDR-II, 4GB max, dual-channel |
| AGP | None |
| PEG16X | One slot |
| Southbridge | Intel ICH6/R |
| Audio | C-Media CMI9880 HD Audio CODEC from ICH6/R feed |
| Audio Connectivity | 8 port backplane speaker, 2 S/PDIF backplane optical input and output |
| PCI Conventional | 3 x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.3 slots |
| PCI Express | 2 x 1X slots |
| IDE | 1 ATA133 compliant port from ICH6/R, 1 ATA133 compliant port from SiS180 |
| IDE RAID | RAID0/1/0+1/ and JBOD on ICH6/R port, RAID0/1/0+1/ and JBOD on SiS180 port |
| SATA | 4 ports from ICH6/R, 2 ports from SiS180 |
| SATA RAID | All 4 ICH6/R ports using Intel Matrix Storage, RAID0/1/0+1/ and JBOD on SiS180 ports |
| Networking | Realtek 8100C Fast Ethernet Controller, 10/100Mbit. Marvell Yukon 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller, 10/100/1000Mbit. ECS 802.11b Wireless USB2.0 Ethernet |
| USB | ICH6/R, 4 x backplane USB2.0, 2 x I/O USB2.0 |
| FireWire | FireWire400, 1 unpowered backplane port, 1 x powered I/O port from VIA VT6307 OCHI controller |
| Other I/O | PS/2, Parallel, 1 x Serial |
Yikes, ECS pack the PF4 with features. Alongside the platform givens like PEG16X for graphics, Matrix Storage and HD Audio (in this case using C-Media's CMI9880 CODEC and featuring optical input and output), you get extra SATA and IDE (with RAID) from an SiS180 ASIC, three Ethernet networking controllers including Gigabit and 802.11b WiFi, 6 USB2.0 ports and FireWire400 to boot.
ECS also swap the PCI Conventional and PCI Express port counts compared to boards like the ABIT AA8, giving the PF4 three PCI Conventional and two PCI Express. For users looking to bring more than two PCI Conventional cards to their new LGA775 system, they'll appreciate it.
ECS equip the PF4 with a quartet of DDR-II DIMM slots, allowing you drop in 4GB of unbuffered DDR-II PC2-3200 or PC2-4200 memory.
So if you can find a PCI Express graphics card that you like, and DDR-II memory appeals, the PF4 seems like a very nice place to put them both, especially if you want to hook up plenty of disk storage.
