Unreal Tournament 2004	Source: Epic

Unreal Tournament 2004 is the sequel to the highly popular UT2003 and uses the very latest Unreal Engine technology. Unreal Tournament 2004 employs the use of Vertex and Pixel Shaders and it's recommended that you use a DirectX 9 videocard if you plan to play competitively.

UT2004
dm-rankin	Points	Ranking
Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/533)	90.83
Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/533)	90.13
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/533)	83.48
DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400)	83.47
ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400)	79.47
VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/533)	85.04
AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400)	90.61
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/533)	85.21
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 Onboard Video)	32.88
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 X800 XT)	74.79
as-convoy	FPS	Ranking
Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/533)	61.57
Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/533)	64.81
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/533)	57.92
DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400)	61.11
ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400)	52.71
VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/533)	57.8
AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400)	61.34
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/533)	54.7
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 Onboard Video)	21.32
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 X800 XT)	48.47
ctf-bridgeoffate	FPS	Ranking
Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/533)	127.42
Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/533)	134.09
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/533)	119.36
DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400)	129.77
ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400)	110.07
VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/533)	118.76
AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400)	126.4
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/533)	120.5
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 Onboard Video)	44.19
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 X800 XT)	103.1

UT2004 is harder on the systems and here we see the ECS RS400-A starts to trail the other motherboards by 10-25FPS.

Doom 3	Source: id Software

Doom 3 is the most advanced game to date. it takes advantage of the latest videocard technology and pushes the processing power of the CPU to its absolute limit. At its highest setting, Ultra quality, texture sizes pass the 500MB mark which means even tomorrow's videocards will have a hard time running everything. The frame rates in the game itself are locked at 60 fps so anything above that point is wasted. Each test is run three times with the third run being recorded.

Doom3
LQ 640x480:	FPS	Ranking
Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/533)	84.4
Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/533)	88.5
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/533)	83.6
DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400)	81.4
ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400)	79.5
VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/533)	78.1
AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400)	83.3
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/533)	85.3
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 Onboard Video)	8.1
ECS RS400-A (RS400 200/400 X800 XT)	76

It shouldn't be a surprise that the ECS RS400-A comes in about 15FPS back.

Flexible & Inexpensive - Good for Basic PC Terminals

Modernizing an older computer can be quite expensive considering all the new technology that has been released in the last year. Luckily a few innovative motherboard manufacturers like ECS has come to the rescue, with motherboards like the RS400-A, you simply upgrade when you're ready!

It's a shame that ATi doesn't give its chipset much time to mature, even Intel doesn't expect something to be a success over night. Its previous RS300 and RS350 chipsets were actually half decent but both were cut down quite quickly. The new RS400 has potential in it but we'll have to wait and see if ATi actually allows this chipset to mature.

The ECS RS400-A is an excellent entry level motherboard, and while we were not able to track down a price, we're sure that the motherboard will be affordable - a hallmark of ECS. The list of extras is pretty short; a 10/100 NIC, 5.1 channel AC'97 audio, onboard video, and that's about it. Should you need to upgrade, the motherboard has two PCI Express x1 slots, the AGP Express slot and the PCI Express x16 slot, as well as two traditional 32 bit PCI slots.

The motherboard itself is quite user friendly and most things are located in its prime spot except the floppy drive connector. For the life of me, I don't understand why manufacturers place the floppy drive connector below the PCI slots. Those of you who are upgrading older computers with cramped cases will be pleased to hear neither the RS400 and SB400 chipsets generate a lot of heat.

We did not expect the ECS RS400-A to be a speed demon and it did come in last in pretty much every benchmark we ran. Of course with most tests, the results were close enough in the office oriented benchmarks that users should not notice any real world difference between this board and one twice the price. In 3D tests, things are different, and hardcore gamers would probably prefer something a bit quicker.

If you simply use your computer for 2D style work like word processing or surfing the internet, the ECS RS400-A is a flexible, no frills motherboard. It's not fast or flashy like a lot of the high end enthusiast-level boards we test, but I'm sure you'll appreciate all the money you save.

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