X-bit labs

X-bit labs CeBIT 2005 Coverage: Day 6 (page 6)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/17/2005 | 04:37 PM ]

ECS: Enabling Athlon 64 on a Socket 775 Mainboard

Ever wanted to have a single PC with processors from both AMD and Intel, but could not fulfill your dream? It seems like Elitegroup Computer Systems company has a solution just for you.

ECS PF88 mainboard’s specifications

ECS’ PF88 mainboard designed for Intel Pentium 4 processors with up to 1066MHz processor system bus and based on SiS656FX + SiS965 chipset supporting dual-channel DDR2 667MHz memory, PCI Express x16, x1 in addition to Serial ATA-II with RAID capabilities and Gigabit Ethernet has a special slot can be upgraded with a special module designed to support AMD Athlon 64 processors in PGA939 form-factor. After the upgrade, the owner will still have a mainboard supporting Serial ATA II, Parallel ATA, PCI Express, USB 2.0, FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet.

ECS PF88 installation

The idea to have special riser cards that contain North Bridge, processor socket as well as whatever else is needed to support different types of central processing units than the mainboard is originally intended for is not new. Last year ASRock already rolled out a mainboard that sported both AMD Athlon XP and AMD Athlon 64 processors and utilized the same concept as ECS PF88 does. Still, ECS is the first to unveil a product that can install both Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon 64 CPUs.

ECS PF88 CPU card

ECS representatives told X-bit labs that the main audience for the PF88 are gamers and enthusiasts who may want to have systems with different CPUs as chips from Intel and AMD perform differently in various applications and there is no clear leader between the two. Furthermore, the CPU card for the PF88 could offer upgrade options for the platform in future.

ECS PF88 CPU card

The platform functioned well with AMD Athlon 64 microprocessor installed, but availability timeframes and pricing are still unclear.