Overclocking is alive and well! PCSTATS has all the details
you need to see at a glance to know which board is best. The chart we've
compiled below lists the highest overclocked Front Side Bus speeds we were able
to achieve while maintaining 100% stability.
The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard overclocks to
a pretty unimpressive 335MHz Front Side Bus.
Does the Intel G33 Express
Impress?
In terms of integrated video motherboards,
for Intel or AMD, the performance difference between chipsets is almost
negligible these days. The scales tip in the Intel G33 Express's favor because
the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is faster than AMD's Athlon64 series. The ECS G33T-M2
motherboard is a good simple mainstream platform for 2D tasks, like regular
office work, surfing the web and the like. The onboard Intel GMA X3100 handles
2D applications just fine, and can be used with Windows Vista Aeroglass because
it's compliant with DirectX 9.0C.
In the benchmarks we saw that the ECS G33T-M2
motherboard's integrated video outperformed the nVIDIA GeForce 7050PV and AMD
690G, largely because the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is more powerful than the
Socket AM2 AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+. The chipset itself is a weaker integrated
videocard than the either nVIDIA or AMD solution however.
When it comes to 3D games the ECS G33T-M2 motherboard
performs faster as long as you have a quick CPU to use. If you want to do gaming
the Intel G33 Express gives you similar performance to the nVIDIA GeFOrce 7050V
and AMD 690G. With a PCI Express x16 videocard is installed the G33 Express
has the advantage of being backed by a Core 2 Duo processor.
The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard is as about as
future ready as you can get, supporting Intel's upcoming 45nm CPUs, as well
as 1333 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). The board is DDR2 only, most motherboard
makers are only releasing one or two models with DDR3 capability as DDR3 RAM is
not expected to really take off until mid 2008.
The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard handles itself well in 2D
applications, making it as fast as other Intel Core 2 Duo platforms. If
you're a gamer the GMA X3100 integrated video is simply not
enough, you'll need to get yourself a PCI Express x16 videocard for sure.
The nVIDIA GeForce 8600GT/GTS is a good place
to start. Overclocking was a no show.
With a retail price of $110 CDN ($105 USD, £51 GBP), the ECS G33T-M2 is
an economical entry level motherboard with integrated video and almost all the
ports and connectors a typical SOHO user will need. There's not much fluff here,
so the G33T-M2 is really just the basis for good workstation PC.
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