Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc motherboard speed: 200 mhz 223 mhz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

Knowing that the ECS 945G-M3 motherboard is not designed for overclocking, I was gentle during the overclocking session. Before we got to that though, the memory frequency was first lowered from DDR2-667 speeds to DDR2-400 speeds. This was done for the unlikely scenario that the memory would top out before the motherboard would.

Raising the motherboard FSB 2-3 MHz at a time, the ECS 945G-M3 seemed quite sporty at low speeds. The motherboard did not reach very high however, and it maxed out at 223 MHz FSB.

It's not the greatest overclock we've ever seen, but then again this is a Micro ATX motherboard intended for media PC applications so it is hardly surprising.

The ECS 945G-M3 BIOS Options

The ECS 945G-M3 is designed to have a small footprint for workstation or entertainment PC's and definitely will not be an overclocking powerhouse. With that in mind, the BIOS options available in the 945G-M3 are quite restricted as you will no doubt see.

In the Advanced Chipset Features section, users have minimal memory timing/frequency adjustments. Users can also adjust the onboard memory options here.

The Frequency/Voltage Controls are impressive. ;-) The motherboard FSB can be adjusted between 200-510 MHz in 1 MHz increments but without any voltage options, don't hold your breath.

	experts tip: physical damage is not covered by warranty
	users who have videocards with large coolers or dual slot coolers have to use a bit of caution when installing them on the ecs 945g-m3 motherboard. because of the lack of real estate on the pcb, ecs places the cmos battery in a vertical position near the pci express x16 slot. standing almost 2 cm tall, the top of the cmos battery can come in contact with the videocard cooler which can potentially damage the videocard and motherboard. users who are careless could potentially snap the cmos battery right off if they force things.... keep this in mind, it pays to do a bit of homework and measure things first.
	Comments and Feedback? Suggest a Tweak.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the ECS 945G-M3 motherboard test system was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this Intel 945G based system is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: intel Pentium D 840 Clock Speed: 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz Motherboard: ECS 945G-M3 (945G) Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 (955X) Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 (945P) Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI) MSI P4N Diamond (NF4 SLI) Foxconn NF4SLI7AA-8EKRS2 (NF4 SLI) ECS C19-A SLI (NF4 SLI XE) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 2x 512MB OCZ Gold GX PC3500 DDR Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Thermaltake Jungle 512 Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Intel INF 7.22 nVIDIA Forceware 7.22 nVIDIA Forceware 84.21 Benchmarks: SYSMark 2004 Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 Super Pi SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark05 3DMark05 3DMark06 UT2004 FarCry Doom 3 Quake 4