DriverHeaven.net: ECS 945G-M3

We have heard a lot about Intel’s Viiv for a while now however it’s taken quite some time for Viiv certified products to reach retail in any reasonable numbers. The motherboard we have to review today is ECS’s first take on the Viiv platform. For most manufacturers this would mean providing the basic specifications required to be able to add Viiv logos to their boxes, however this is certainly not so in the case of ECS.

The Board/Bundle

The ECS 945G-M3 comes packaged in a relatively small box by normal motherboard standards. Despite this smaller size there is a reasonable amount of information on the packaging such as support for dual core CPU’s and Viiv technology.

Turning the box over we find further, more detailed product information including support for the latest 1066fsb CPU’s.

As always with motherboards the first thing you find when you open the box is the bundled components. In the case of the 945G-M3 we have the I/O shield, a sata cable, IDE cable, power converter, manual and driver CD.

It is hard to say whether this is the essentials or just the bare minimum as far as a bundle goes however we would have liked to see at least an extra sata cable included.

The board itself is a M-ATX design so all of the components are well packed. Before we look at some of the finer details we should point out that the board is based on a very cool purple PCB, ideal for case modders.

Looking more closely we can see that all of the essential connectivity is present. We have a PCIe 16x slot which sits alongside the PCIe 1x slot. Next we have two standard PCI slots. People are either going to love the order of the slots or hate it. Our preference for the slots would have been PCIe>PCI>PCIe>PCI as adding a dual slot graphics card could result in losing the only PCIe 1x connector. It is not a big deal, however as PCIe cards become more commonplace it would be very possible to run into issues.

At the bottom right of the board are located the Sata ports (of which there are four) providing SATA, Raid 0 and Raid 1 modes. These are powered by the Intel controller which we have found to be a completely stable and good performing component on other products in the past. A good choice by ECS.

Moving along the board layout we have the further connectivity in the form of the IDE and floppy drive connectors as well as a 24pin PSU connector. The IDE connector provides support for 2 IDE100 or 2 IDE66 devices. There are two memory slots on this model which allow you to add up to 2gb to the system. DDR2-667, 533 and 400 are supported.

Looking at the rear panel I/O section of the motherboard we find everything we would expect, there are PS2 mouse and keyboard ports, four usb 2.0 ports as well as Serial and Parallel ports. The other connectors we can see are the firewire, audio (7.1 Realtek HD audio) Gb lan (Via branded) and the VGA out (Intel GMA950).

In summary, the above specs show that this is a very well rounded product. It should more than cater for the average PC user and in some areas such as the CPU support it may even exceed expectations. Let’s take a look at how it performs.