ECS A85F2-A Golden Review: All That Glitters
by Ian Cutress on January 12, 2013 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ECS
- FM2
- A85X
ECS A85F2-A Golden In The Box
So far in our FM2 coverage, as the price of the motherboards has been sub-$150, the boxes tend to be a little light. No-one is willing to parade a board in a ton of extra USB 3.0 so no USB 3.0 brackets are put in place, neither is a drive for WiFi apart from a few select models. Given the fact that ECS shift a large amount of product compared to Zotac, EVGA and to a certain extent Biostar, I would assume that what they can put in box would be an organised procurement of stuff that could go into every box.
What we get is:
Rear IO Panel Shield
User Manual
Driver CD
Seven SATA cables
As kind of expected, while ECS does not go beyond a bunch of SATA cables, we get plenty of them. Seven cables covers all the onboard SATA ports which is great if a user wants to go down the storage route.
ECS A85F2-A Golden Overclocking
Experience with ECS A85F2-A Golden
Given the memory issues that have plagued my testing of this motherboard, I was not expecting much in terms of CPU overclocking. There are no automatic overclocking presets, and the OS software deals with BCLK/FSB only, meaning we are to dive straight into the BIOS. Even when using the options there, basic tests that would pass on all other boards fail to pass here. The voltage range itself is a little odd, being from 1.495 V to 1.975 V in 0.020 V increments. Normally for FM2 we start at a 44x multiplier at 1.400 volts and go from there.
Methodology:
Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.
For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.
Manual Overclock:
Using the BIOS, we took a similar approach to overclocking as with the other A85X motherboards tested with this processor. We start at 1.4 volts on the CPU in the BIOS and a CPU multiplier of 44x for all cores. Here are the results:
All other settings were left at default apart from CPU Multiplier and CPU Voltage. As shown, performance on the ECS is rather poor, requiring 1.575 V for 4.4 GHz to pass 5 minutes of OCCT. While a five minute test is not a complete and thorough stability test in every sense of the word (is a system that crashes after 50 days at full load ‘stable’?), it provides a reference point with out other reviews for comparison and is a mid point for review time limitations.
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Samus - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I had an ECS K7S5A years ago. VERY solid board, one of the best Athlon XP boards made. And it had an SiS chipset (one of the last)Death666Angel - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I had that same board! :D I was dirt cheap compared to other boards of the same speed. For me, it also always worked well, OC'ing my Athlon, supporting all the RAM I inserted. But I also read of a load of people who had issues with the board.As for ECS, I'm pretty sure they are big with OEMs.
silverblue - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
Mine slowly stopped allowing for 133MHz CPU and memory clocks, and in the end, it wouldn't even boot at 100/100. Bought a KT266A board and all was well again.It's amazing that back then, your choice of board and chipset could make for a large difference in performance...
blppt - Monday, January 14, 2013 - link
I had one too! No issues at all (although the onboard sound was beyond awful), and I remember around that time how popular this board was. A friend of mine had some sort of cold-boot issue with the board, but if you think back to that time, almost every motherboard had some sort of quirk to it. Amazing how far we've come since those days...my last 5-6 motherboards have had exactly zero issues.I really wouldnt hesitate to buy another ECS for any build, unfortunately I've gotten into the habit of buying most of my parts from the local Microcenter (instant gratification!) and they dont carry any ECS stuff.
fumigator - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
I own since year 2008~9 when it was just released, an ECS GF8200A, socket AM2+ motherboard based on nforce 7 (8200 IGP). I love it, and its still working... also 24/7 for 2 years consecutive.JonnyDough - Sunday, January 13, 2013 - link
ECS has long been like most other board manufacturers. They have high and low end board but have not competed as strongly at the high end. It's good to see them moving more into this segment. However, I feel that it's a necessary move as well if they would like to stay in business because over the last five years or so motherboards have started using better quality components.Eggrenade - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
"A Golden Review" --right in the title.How modest!
Choppedliver - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
Purple... that would look bad ass... and lsu'ish. dark blue would look good too. and silver. Like the christmas cartoon silver and golllllllld silver and gollllllllldArbie - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
Meandering zero-value text. C'mon, AT! Please don't write like Tom's.
DanNeely - Saturday, January 12, 2013 - link
With the right edge of the board unsupported you're going to be flexing it any time you try to insert memory with the board screwed into the case.