It's fairly new and I haven't found too many reviews of it. It seems
to be targeted towards gamers, though I'm wondering if it wouldn't be
a good choice for a budget PC in lieu of the Asus M2A-VM I was
planning to buy.
"Igor" <someone@somewhere.org> wrote in message
news:2r556490nk6nb9lav45osqdob5p28opnn3@4ax.com...
> Has anyone used the ECS GF8200A motherboard?
>
> http://www.ecsusa.com/ECSWebSite/Pro...CategoryID=1&T
ypeID=43&DetailID=873&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=12 3&LanID=9
>
> It's fairly new and I haven't found too many reviews of it. It seems
> to be targeted towards gamers, though I'm wondering if it wouldn't be
> a good choice for a budget PC in lieu of the Asus M2A-VM I was
> planning to buy.
ECS is pretty low quality, along the lines of PCCHips. No coincidence, as
they are the same company. From reviewing the specs though, this chipset
seems to be a good choice for just about any build...gamer or budget or
whatever. What you do with it depends pretty much on how much money you
throw at it. Like for example a higher end processor plus good graphics
card = a pretty good gaming system. Or a mid-level processor with built-in
video would give you a pretty good budget build, also. So I don't blame you
for being tempted by the ECS board. Overall not a bad choice, if it was a
better brand.
But there is another board you might want to consider, very similar, made by
Biostar. Biostar is an extremely under-rated name brand and they produce
some very high quality, reliable and fast mainboards. I believe you'd have
better luck with it than any ECS board, and I actually prefer Biostar over
Asus also (donning my flame suit for daring to diss Asus, ha ha) -Dave
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:59:43 -0400, "Dave" <noway@nohow.not> wrote:
>Overall not a bad choice, if it was a
>better brand.
>
I've had good experiences with ECS boards in the past. In fact, the
board in the computer I'm writing this on is an ECS. It's worked well
for the last 4 years or so.
>But there is another board you might want to consider, very similar, made by
>Biostar. Biostar is an extremely under-rated name brand and they produce
>some very high quality, reliable and fast mainboards.
I was looking at Biostar boards, but noticed that ECS offers a 3 year
warranty on their boards, whereas Biostar only offers a 1 year
waranty.
"Igor" <someone@somewhere.org> wrote in message
newsra56496e6vf3gaas5ucu4tgjrpqggiq1m@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:59:43 -0400, "Dave" <noway@nohow.not> wrote:
>
> >Overall not a bad choice, if it was a
> >better brand.
> >
>
> I've had good experiences with ECS boards in the past. In fact, the
> board in the computer I'm writing this on is an ECS. It's worked well
> for the last 4 years or so.
I'm glad to hear that. If you are happy with them, you might want to stick
with them. However...
>
> >But there is another board you might want to consider, very similar, made
by
> >Biostar. Biostar is an extremely under-rated name brand and they produce
> >some very high quality, reliable and fast mainboards.
>
> I was looking at Biostar boards, but noticed that ECS offers a 3 year
> warranty on their boards, whereas Biostar only offers a 1 year
> waranty.
First time I ever heard of biostar, there was a system at work that had been
running rock-solid for years under extreme conditions. Basically, it was
120F in the room, very dusty, etc. I wanted to know what the heck was IN
that box. It was a biostar board. I started building my own systems mostly
with Biostar after that. Never had a problem. They are a true bargain
brand, excellent quality, and usually inexpensive. -Dave
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:17:30 -0400, "Dave" <noway@nohow.not> wrote:
> I started building my own systems mostly
>with Biostar after that. Never had a problem. They are a true bargain
>brand, excellent quality, and usually inexpensive
I'll take it under consideration.
I'm trying to order all my parts from the same outlet to save on
shipping, so it'll probably come down to whatever boards the place I
order from have in stock. Now that I think about it, I came very close
to choosing a Biostar board for this computer, but just as I was about
to order, Tiger Direct went and pulled it from their catalog!
FYI, I suspect a company called Mach Speed sells rebranded Biostar
boards. If you compare Mach Speed's manuals to Biostar's, the fonts,
page layout, etc., are identical.
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:59:43 -0400, "Dave" <noway@nohow.not> put
finger to keyboard and composed:
>But there is another board you might want to consider, very similar, made by
>Biostar. Biostar is an extremely under-rated name brand and they produce
>some very high quality, reliable and fast mainboards. I believe you'd have
>better luck with it than any ECS board ...
Some Biostar boards in the 486 days used fake cache RAM chips ... as
did PCChips. That said, I'm still running a Biostar MB1433 486
motherboard, with genuine cache, and a 10-year-old PCChips M571 socket
7 motherboard. Both have been very reliable.
- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
ECS GF8200 
ra56496e6vf3gaas5ucu4tgjrpqggiq1m@4ax.com...
Linear Mode
