MaximumPC 2005 12

DECEMBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 85

TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZEDreviews

H

ybrid doesn’t always mean good.

That’s what we realized after testing

ECS’ PF88 Extreme Hybrid mother-

board, which lets you run either a Pentium 4 or

an Athlon 64. Yes, you read that right, a combo

board that lets you run either CPU. It’s part of

ECS’ new master plan to prove it can make

more than ultra-budget motherboards.

It’s an odd tack, because the PF88 is

budget priced at $85. Still, this board is

jam-packed with features, such as a P4

LGA775 socket that supports 1066MHz

FSB CPUs and dual-core procs. There are

also four DDR2/667 RAM slots, two full-

length PCI-E slots, three PCI slots, gigabit

Ethernet, HD-compliant audio, FireWire,

and a Silicon Image SIL3132 SATA 3G-

capable RAID controller—a lot of hardware

for the money. It really gets interesting

when you factor in the board’s EliteBus

slot. For an additional $50, you get the spe-

cial SIMA card, which features an Athlon

64-compatible Socket 939, two DIMM

slots, and a SIS 756 core-logic chip. When

the SIMA card is plugged into the EliteBus,

the board disables the onboard Pentium 4

north bridge and hands control to the SIS

756 controller on the daughter board.

On paper it’s intriguing. You buy a moth-

erboard for one processor and upgrade to

something else down the road (ECS has

plans for a Pentium M SIMA board). But

instead of being a really good Pentium 4

motherboard or a really good Athlon 64/FX

motherboard, it’s

mediocre for either

platform. We outfit-

ted the PF88 with

the same P4 CPU,

videocard, driv-

ers, and hard drive

from our October

Intel-vs.-nVidia

chipset showdown

(Head2Head). When

that shootout was

over, we wondered if core-logic chipsets

even matter anymore. We now know they

do. The PF88—with its dual SIS chipsets—is

seriously lacking in hard drive speed, PCI

Express bus speed, and memory bandwidth

performance. In our hard drive transfer tests,

the PF88 could only burst at 76MB/s second

while the Intel/nVidia chipsets could reach

into the 127MB/s range. Memory bandwidth

was also about 19 percent slower, and the

PF88’s PCI Express data throughput was a

sad 746MB/s versus the 1.2GB/s of the Intel

and nVidia chipsets.

To switch from the P4 to the Athlon 64/

FX mode, you need to install the included

secondary BIOS chip in a second socket

and pull a dozen jumpers. You then popu-

late the SIMA card with your memory, CPU,

and heatsink. You also have to move the

ATX12V plug from the PF88 motherboard to

the SIMA daughter card. The SIMA card will

block one of the longer PCI-E slots when

inserted but that’s fine as the PF88 doesn’t

support any dual videocard modes. That’s

where the second full-length PCI-E slot

comes into play. With the first one blocked,

your PCI-E card goes into the second slot.

You’re supposed to be able to make the

CPU switch without having to reinstall the

OS, but we were forced to reinstall because

of unexplained blue-screen errors.

The SIMA card is quite limiting. It has just

two memory slots (versus four on a full mobo),

and we had problems finding a heatsink small

enough to fit the SIMA without hitting the RAM

socket or the north bridge cooler on the moth-

erboard. (Amazingly, the board was able to

work with a Socket 939 FX-57, so we know it

will support dual-core procs.) The board boot-

ed and ran like any Athlon 64 board, which is

no small feat—it takes some serious engineer-

ing to get something like this to work.

But is it a hardware hack even worth

doing? We don’t think so. It makes far more

sense to buy a board that’s great at every-

thing rather than accept the compromised

performance of the PF88. And if you truly

did switch from a P4 to an Athlon, you’d

have to chuck your DDR2 RAM and buy

DDR RAM, which just doesn’t make sense

to us. In the end, the PF88 is proof that just

because you can build something doesn’t

mean you should.

—GORDON MAH UNG

ECS PF88 Extreme

Hybrid

This mobo is unique, but it’s performance is nothing special

ECS’ Frankenmobo uses a converter board to run either a Pentium

4 or an Athlon 64—poorly.

$85 ($50 for SIMA card), http://www.ecsusa.com

ECS PF88 EXTREME HYBRID

PRIUS

It actually works!

PRIAPISM

5

Piss-poor performance when

Best scores in the P4 category are bolded. How we tested: We used a 3.73GHz Pentium 4 EE, 1GB of Crucial Tech DDR2/667, a GeForce 7800 GTX, a Seagate 160GB compared with other chipsets.

Barracuda 7200.7, and Windows XP Pro SP2. For the Athlon 64 runs, we used an Athlon 64 FX-57 and 1GB of Corsair DDR400.

BENCHMARKS

PF88

IN P4 MODE

ASUS P4

P5ND2-SLI

PERFORMANCE

DIFFERENCE

PF88 IN ATHLON 64

MODE

3DMARK2001 SE OVERALL 24,605 26,709 -8% 29,060

3DMARK05 CPU 5,062 5,793 -13% 7,745

QUAKE III 464 fps 509 fps -9% 500 fps

HD TACH 3.01 BURST 76.3MB/s 127.1MB/s -40% 85.8MB/s

SISOFT SANDRA 05 RAM BANDWIDTH 5,443MB/s 6,697MB/s -19% 4,869MB/s

PCMARK2005 OVERALL 4,715 5,021 -6% 3871

PCMARK2005 MEMORY 4,421 5,092 -13% WNR

PCMARK2005 GRAPHICS 6,025 6,299 -4% 6148

PCMARK2005 HARD DRIVE 3,964 5,326 -26% 2096

AQUAMARK GRAPHICS 11,805 12,651 -7% 13,770

AQUAMARK CPU 9,744 11,720 -17% 11,488

AQUAMARK OVERALL 73,516 82,182 -11% 86,088

3DD LOAD PCI-E PERFORMANCE 746MB/s 1,296MB/s -38% 595MB/s