ECS GF7100PVT-M Review

Makaveli - 2008-02-16 15:20:18 in Motherboards
Category: Motherboards
Reviewed by: Makaveli   
Reviewed on: February 25, 2008
Manufacturer: ECS
Provided by: ECS
Price: $64.99 USD

Introduction:

For some users, having a top-of-the-line motherboard that supports SLi or Crossfire is just not necessary. And for others, a motherboard that has onboard graphics is more than enough for the games they play. For those people, Elite Computer Systems has come out with a new MicroATX motherboard that has the nVidia 7100 chipset with onboard video. The small size of MicroATX motherboards is perfect for users who have small cases or HTPC cases. But with a motherboard so small, there is probably a lack of features, compared to a full-sized ATX motherboard, right? Wrong. Not only does this ECS GF7100PVT-M have the nVidia 7100 chipset, it also has an onboard DVI output connector – something I’ve never seen on a motherboard. Is this inexpensive ECS GF7100PVT-M MicroATX motherboard a must-have? Join me as I thoroughly investigate.

 

Closer Look:

The ECS GF7100PVT-M comes packaged in a small box with its features proudly displayed on either side. I’ve always liked how ECS includes a very descriptive breakdown of its motherboards on the back of the boxes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The motherboard is packaged in the standard anti-static bag and has a cardboard piece holding it into place with most of the accessories laying on top. The ECS GF7100PVT-M comes with the rear I/O shield, a SATA cable, IDE cable, DVI-to-HDMI converter, an instruction manual, a driver CD, and a hardware installation guide.

 

 

 

Now let’s take a look at the ECS GF7100PVT-M MicroATX motherboard up close to see what’s on the board.

Closer Look:

The ECS GF7100PVT-M measures in at the standard 244mm x 244mm MicroATX size. As mentioned earlier, the board has the nVidia 7100/630i chipset. The board supports 1333MHz FSB, up to 4GB of DDR2 800 memory, and new 45nm processors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rear I/O panel has the standard connectors with an addition of a DVI-out port. This is very convenient because DVI video quality is better than the standard VGA. Along with the DVI connector, there is a standard VGA connector, four USB connectors, a serial port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, a standard Giga LAN connector, and 8 channel audio.

 

This motherboard features one PCI-Express x16 slot, two PCI slots, and one PCI-Express x1 slot. Below the PCI slots, you’ll find an audio header and three USB headers lined up next to one another.

 

 

The ECS GF7100PVT-M has a 24-pin power connector, as well as a 4-pin power connector that sits near the CPU. This motherboard has one IDE connector, one floppy connector, and two 240-pin DDR2 memory slots that together can support up to 4GB of RAM.

 

 

Let’s move on and take a closer look at the BIOS for this ECS GF7100PVT-M MicroATX motherboard.

Closer Look:

On previous MicroATX motherboards that I've owned, the BIOS usually isn't stuffed with options and particularly lack overclocking abilities. Hopefully, it'll be different with this ECS MicroATX motherboard.

This motherboard uses the American Megatrends, Inc. BIOS. Let's take a closer look!

 

 

 

 

Standard CMOS Setup:

Under this first tab, you'll find the date, time, and listed hardware you have attached to the motherboard.

 

 

Advanced Setup:

This tab is where you'll want to go to change your boot order and some CPU settings, such as enabling or disabling C1E.

 

 

Advanced Chipset Setup:

You'll find the options to change your memory timings and other memory-related things here. I was disappointed to find no memory voltage control.

 

 

Integrated Peripherals:

Here the user can change their onboard SATA, RAID, and IDE controllers.

 

 

Power Management Setup:

Under this tab, you'll be able to set up how you want your computer to be suspended and resumed.

 

 

PNP/PCI Configuration:

You can configure the interrupt requests between the two PCI slots here.

 

 

PC Health Status:

This tab is where you can monitor your system's temperatures, select a shutdown temperature for your CPU, and more.

 

 

Frequency/Voltage Control:

This section clearly shows that this motherboard is not built to be overclocked very far. You cannot set the CPU voltage, only DIMM voltage. You can change the FSB up to 1333MHz, which for this Intel Q6600 2.4GHz processor will be about 3.0GHz.

 

Now let's pop in the driver CD and get this motherboard configured!

Configuration:

To install the drivers for this ECS motherboard, just insert the included disc after you've installed your operating system. This very basic software allows you to either install everything at once, browse the CD, or get help. I always install everything just to be safe and to ensure that I don't miss anything important to install.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since this board has an nVidia chipset, it makes sense that you need to install everything from nVidia to make sure that your motherboard works as prescribed.

 

Let's hurry up and test this thing already!

Specifications:

CPU
  • Socket LGA775 for Intel 95W CPU supports Core™ 2 Quad to Celeron™
  • FSB 1333/1066/800/533 MHz
  • Support Hyper-Threading Technology
Chipset
  • Single chipset: GeForce7100/ 630i (MCP73PV)
Graphics
  • On Chip NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
  • Share Memory: Maximum up to 256MB
Memory
  • Single-channel DDR2 memory architecture
  • 2 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 4 GB
  • Support DDR2 800/667/533 MHz DDR2 Memory
Expansion Slot
  • 1 x PCI Express x16 slot
  • 1 x PCI Express x1 slot
  • 2 x PCI slots
Storage
  • Support by NVIDIA GeForce 7100/630I
  • 2 x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices
  • 4 x Serial ATA2 devices
  • RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1, RAID5 configuration
Audio
  • Realtek ALC888 8-channel HD Audio codec
  • Compliant with HD specification
LAN
  • Realtek 8111B Giga LAN
Rear Panel I/O
  • 1 x PS/2 keyboard & PS/2 mouse connectors
  • 1 x Serial port (COM1)
  • 1 x VGA port
  • 1 x RJ45 LAN connector
  • 4 x USB ports
  • 1 x DVI connector
  • 1 x Audio port 8 CH 6 JACKS
  • 1X HDMI (w/DVI to HDMI Adapter)
Internal I/O Connectors & Headers
  • 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
  • 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector
  • 1 x FDD connector
  • 1 x IDE connector
  • 4 x Serial ATA connectors
  • 3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports
  • 1 x Front panel switch/LED header
  • 1 x Front panel audio header
  • 1 x S/PDIF out header, 1 x CD-in header
  • CPUFAN/SYSFAN connectors
System BIOS
  • AMI BIOS with 8Mb SPI ROM
  • Supports Plug and Play, ACPI& DMI
  • Supports STR(S3)& STD(S4)
Form Factor
  • Micro-ATX Size, 244mm*244mm

 

Features:

-All information sourced from ECS's website: http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?detailid=839&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=44&LanID=9

 

 

 

 

 

 

Testing:

This ECS GF7100PVT-M MicroATX motherboard is equipped with onboard video. Therefore, I'm going to be testing this motherboard without a video card and with a video card. I used the DVI-out port on the motherboard instead of the VGA port. To get a better idea for how this motherboard compares to some of today's motherboards, I'll be comparing it to the Foxconn Mars. Both of the motherboards were compared with the same equipment so that the playing field was level.

 

Testing Setup:

Comparison Motherboards:

 

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

As stated previously, the BIOS equipped with this motherboard had no voltage control for the CPU and no multiplier change; only pre-determined FSB was available. I chose the highest rated FSB that this motherboard supports and that was 1333MHz, which when paired with a stock multiplier of 9, brought the CPU's clock speed to 3.0GHz. Being the huge overclocker that I am, I was very disappointed that this was the furthest I could push this motherboard.

 

Benchmarks:

  1. Apophysis
  2. WinRAR
  3. SpecviewPerf 10
  4. PCMark Vantage Professional
  5. Sandra XII
  6. ScienceMark 2.02 Final
  7. Cinebench 10
  8. HD Tune 2.54
  1. Crysis
  2. Knights of the Sea
  3. Bioshock
  4. Call of Duty 4
  5. World in Conflict
  6. Call of Jaurez
  7. 3DMark 06 Professional

 

Testing:

We're going to start off with the system specific benchmarks.

 

Apophysis is up first. The program is used to render fractal images and records the time it takes to render. Below are the settings that we used:

 

 

The results are in minutes to complete; lower is better.

 

 

In WinRAR we use 10MB, 100MB and 500MB files and record the time that it takes to compress these files. The results are in seconds; lower is better.

 

ZIP:

 

 

 

RAR:

 

 

 

Everything here looked neck-and-neck.

 

Testing:

SPECview 10 is a benchmark we use to test the system's OpenGL performance. I'll be running the multi-threaded tests to measure the performance in the tests listed below. Higher scores are desired in these tests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PCMark Vantage is a new benchmarking utility from Futuremark that tests complete system performance. I'll be running the system suite and recording the overall scores; higher is better.

 

The ECS fluctuated by doing well in some of the benchmarks and then not doing well in others.

Testing:

SiSoft Sandra is a complete synthetic benchmarking program and diagnostic utility. I will be running multiple benchmarks from this program to get a better idea for what this ECS MicroATX motherboard can do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Processor Arithmetic

 

Multi-Core Efficiency

 

Memory Bandwidth

 

Memory Latency

 

Cache and Memory

 

File System

 

Physical Disks

 

Power Management Efficiency

 

The ECS GF7100PVT-M did really well in some tests and in others it did mediocre.

Testing:

Sciencemark allows us to test real world performance, which is a nice change from the synthetic benchmarks. We ran this benchmark and recorded the overall score achieved by each motherboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Higher is Better

 

Cinebench is quite useful for testing your CPU, OpenGL capabilities, and your system. Cinebench uses the software program called CINEMA 4D.

 

Higher is Better

 

HD Tune allows the user to view and measure the performance of their hard disk(s).

 

Higher is Better

 

 

Lower is Better

 

In the Cinebench test, the ECS board stood out ahead of the others. Even with a slight overclock, the board does much better than when it's at stock.

 

Testing:

Crysis is a very new and very popular game. Crysis is one of the most demanding games on the market today. I'll be running the included GPU benchmark.

 

 

Settings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This motherboard from ECS did well when it was paired with an 8800GT.

Testing:

PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a rather new game that features the all new DirectX10 and its own graphics engine. This realistic game is hard to peel away from!

 

The settings we will use are below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing out of the norm here in these results.

Testing:

BioShock is a fairly new title that can be quite cruel to a system because of its demanding graphics.

 

Settings:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 8800GT allowed this board to achieve a high average FPS in this intense game.

Testing:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the latest installment in the Call of Duty series. This installment is by far my favorite Call of Duty game that I've played so far. I will be running FRAPS 2.9.3 to test for the average FPS during the course that we at OverclockersClub.com run.

 

 

The settings used are listed below:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ECS board came out on top in every resolution in Call of Duty 4.

Testing:

World In Conflict is a new title that features DirectX10. This is a real time strategy game that allows the user to play through some devastating scenarios.

 

 

The settings we will use are listed below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the latter resolutions, all the motherboards performed almost exactly the same.

Testing:

Call of Juarez is a Wild Wild West first-person shooter that uses DirectX10. The game can take quite a toll on most video cards on the market today.

 

The settings we will use are listed below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything seemed to be just about neck-and-neck in this particular game.

Testing

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is the latest chapter for the Company of Heroes series. This game's breathtaking graphics make it tough to pull away from.

 

Settings: