Product Listing

ECS KA1 MVP (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire)

By Zachary Chan - 23 Mar 2006

Conclusion

Conclusion

We might say that since ECS changed their strategy to boost their image as a top-tier motherboard manufacturer, they have been through more or less a trial and error stage delivering products with promise only to lose out in delivery. The KA1 MVP however, is a CrossFire motherboard that is worthy of praise. ECS has really come through this time to produce a board that has the features, the overclocking, stability and for once, does not skimp on performance through a conservative setup. With a less restrictive BIOS implementation, the KA1 MVP can better accommodate enthusiasts and tweakers, a group that the 'Extreme' line of motherboards supposedly target, but has never actually met the challenge till now.

It also became very apparent that the KA1 MVP was a mature product in the course of our testing with no setup issues, solid stability throughout benchmarking and effortless overclocking. Though still missing some voltage controls, the KA1 MVP did not lose too much overclocking efficiency even while running with a full 1GHz HT link. Our benchmark results confirmed the fine job ECS has done with the KA1 MVP, which offered performance on par and in some cases, slightly superior to other RD480 motherboards.

Feature-wise, the KA1 MVP has the standard fare that you'd expect from such a board. Dual LAN, HD Audio, SATA II, eSATA, FireWire, ECS has included them all. While it isn't as rich as some of the high-end ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards, we don't think you'd really find fault with the KA1 MVP. The board still has its rough edges, which will cause some frustration with cable management, but nothing that would cause you to lose any sleep over.

The KA1 MVP may be ECS' finest board yet.

With the KA1 MVP, ECS has an ace tucked under their sleeves. While there have been an influx of CrossFire capable motherboards in the market in the past few months, there have been very few implementations that cater towards the enthusiast community for the AMD Socket 939 platform, with ABIT's AT8 probably being the only exception. Many top-tier manufacturers have preferred to design around the recently announced (and more costly) ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset instead. However, at US$130, the KA1 MVP isn't exactly going for the usual low price points that ECS boards can usually boast about. It still comes in cheaper than most mid-range enthusiast multi-GPU boards out there (be it SLI or CrossFire), but not by much. With everything said, the KA1 MVP manages to come off as an excellent effort by ECS and is a highly recommendable product.

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