ECS NFORCE4 A939 REVIEW

"The ECS Nforce4 A939 motherboard is a board for the budget buyer looking for the latest Socket 939 Processor support but without the high price of the more advanced Socket 939 motherboards. Due to the ECS Nforce4 A939 being a budget motherboard it lacks features like Firewire and has only limited Overclocking ability. However the ECS Nforce4 A939 still does have alot of the latest technology like the Nvidia Nforce4 (not Ultra) chipset, Sata with Raid, USB 2.0 and Dual Channel DDR. The ECS Nforce4 A939 has the usual extras like 4 DDR slots in Dual Channel configuration which allows upto 4GB Memory to be installed onto the motherboard and 4 Sata headers for the latest hard drives. The ECS Nforce4 A939 comes with a single PCIE 16x slot which it allows the ECS Nforce4 A939 to use all of the latest video cards, however with the ECS Nforce4 A939 being a budget motherboard it doesn't support SLI due to the lack of the second PCIE 16x slot."

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

MOTHERBOARD	ECS NFORCE4 A939 (BIOS v1.1G)
	NVIDIA NFORCE4 DRIVER v6.70
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2 (BIOS v2.10)
	ULI INTEGRATED DRIVER v2.20
PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON64 3000
VIDEO CARD	MSI GEFORCE 6600 GT PCIE
NVIDIA DRIVER	FORCEWARE v84.21
MEMORY	2 x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0c

PCMARK 2005

FINAL SCORE

	3100
	2915

CPU SCORE

	2633
	2607

MEMORY SCORE

	3503
	3467

GRAPHICS

	3505
	3407

HDD SCORE

	3075
	2947

ECS NFORCE4 A939 ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2

COMMENT - "For out first test we have choosen PCMARK 2005, it has a variety of tests designed tor benchmark the processor, video card, memory and hdd for a final score. The ECS Nforce4 A939 takes an early lead and it's final score beats the Asrock 939 Dual Sata by 6%."

3DMARK 2001 SE

	17116
	16709

3DMARK 2003

	7829
	7725

3DMARK 2005

	3382
	2982

ECS NFORCE4 A939 ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2

COMMENT - "3dmark 2001 SE performance isn't so video card limited like 3dmark 2003 and 2005. The ECS Nforce4 A939 delivers a modest victory over the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 2% with 3dmark 2003 but a much more impressive 12% with 3dmark 2005."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
3DMARK 2001 SE
32Bit color
D3D Hardware T&L
Antialiasing Disabled
Double Frame Buffer
Compressed Texture Format
24Bit Z-Buffer Depth

3DMARK 2003
No Pixel Processing
Optimal Texture Filtering
4x Max Anisotropy
Optimal Vertex Shaders
No Repeat Tests
No Fixed Framerate

3DMARK 2005
No Anti-Aliasing
Optimal Filtering
HLSL VS Target 2_0
HLSL PS Target 2_0
No Fixed Framerate

3DMARK 2006

FINAL SCORE

	1416
	1214

SM2.0 SCORE

	539
	420

SM3.0 SCORE

	554
	506

CPU SCORE

	716
	711

ECS NFORCE4 A939 ASROCK 939 DUAL SATA2

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
1280x1024 Resolution
Anti-aliasing Disabled
Optimal Filtering
HLSL VS Target 3_0
HLSL PS Target 3_0

COMMENT - "After the sudden performance increase for the ECS Nforce4 A939 shown with 3dmark 2005 I was looking forward to seeing the result for 3dmark 2006. The ECS Nforce4 A939 surges ahead of the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 with a big 15% performance increase."