ECS GF8200A Review

ajmatson - August 19, 2008
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Testing:

To test how well the ECS GF8200A stands up, I will be running it through a series of benchmarks, both scientific and video based, to push it to the breaking point. This will give us a good idea of how well the board will perform under everyday stress, and show failures, if any. To gauge overall performance, I will be comparing it against other boards using the same chipset, and the newer GeForce 8300 chipset. To keep any outside variables from interfering with the scores, all components will be run at their stock timings, settings, speeds, and voltages. All comparison boards will also be run with the same exact hardware and settings as the ECS GF8200A for better comparison numbers with no differences to cause anomalies in the scores.

Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 "Black Box" (200x12.5)
Motherboard: ECS GF8200A
Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12
Video Card #1: Integrated GeForce 8300 IGP graphics w/ Forceware 175.19
Video Card #2: PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 w/ Catalyst 8.6
Video Card #3: ASUS 9800 GTX w/ Forceware 175.19 (with HybridPower enabled)
Video Card #4: ASUS 9800 GTX w/ Forceware 175.19 (with HybridPower disabled)
Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.11 750GB SATA w/32MB Cache
Optical Drive: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Motherboard:

Comparison Motherboard: ASUS M3N78 Pro
Comparison Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 "Black Box" @ 210x14 = 2.940GHz
Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-18

On this ECS board, I did not get very far with my attempts at overclocking. I attribute this to the board only having a 4-pin CPU power connector and a four phase voltage regulator setup. I could not get enough clean power through the board to sustain a stable overclock. I did get the ECS GF8200A up to 2.94GHz by bumping the CPU frequency up to 210MHz from the stock 200MHz, and upping the CPU multiplier to 14x. However, to do this, I had to push the CPU voltage up to 1.55v, which is, in my opinion, the highest I would ever like to see the vCore of a CPU. With everything stable at 2.94GHz, that's where the overclocking benchmarks will be run.