ECS EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2 V2.0 Motherboard Review

The motherboard I chose to replace an old junker is the GeForce 6100PM-M2. Yeah, it has an Nvidia chipset. And while Nvidia may not make the best chipset on earth, they make one of the cheapest when you are on a budget. And since it supports my Athlon 64 X2, along with 16GB of DDR2 RAM, I am more than happy to give it a shot.

The funny thing about how expensive technology is, is that as soon as you buy something that costs $300, it’s automatically obsolete and is worth roughly 1/3 of the original price. Actually, it was pretty much obsolete the moment you bought it. The world of the PC DIYer is a fantastic world, but the price bracket sucks the biggest set of hairy boys possible. That’s why when I had to replace my motherboard on my tight budget, I went for one that wouldn’t break the bank. Because let’s face it. There are going to be a couple dozen introduced next week that will render your new i7 compatible board as ancient technology. I think I’ll stick with my Athlon Dual Core until the price range comes down.

So here are the specs on the board itself:

ECS Geforce6100PM-M2 V2.0 motherboard features the NVIDIA Geforce6100/nForce430 integrated chipset, which combine multiple graphics solutions and deliver the outstanding graphics performance. It supports the latest AMD socket AM2+ processors and dual-channel DDR2 memory up to DDR2 800. Geforce6100PM-M2 motherboard is the optimum choice for AMD platform.

Features

Certified For Windows Vista The latest generation Microsoft O.S., delivers better personal productivity and digital entertainment on your PC through its improved reliability, security, and performance.	Dual core Outperforms single-core processors on most multithreaded applications while running at lower clock speeds and consuming less power.
HT 2000 AMD64 technology provides simultaneous support for 32-bit and 64-bit computing with 2000MT/s system bus HyperTransport technology.	Dual Channel DDR2 800 Doubles the bandwidth of your system memory up to 12.8GB/s and pumps up the system performance.
Serial-ATA II Doubles the transfer speed of SATA, running at speed up to 3.0Gb/s, and fully compatible with the soon-to-be-released SATA HDD, CD-ROM and other cutting-edge devices with NCQ function support.	10/100 LAN Provides 10/100 Mbps solution to your network or broadhand connection without having to buy an extra LAN card.
USB 2.0 The latest connectivity standard which delivers transfer speeds up to 480Mb/s for easy connectivity and ultra-fast data transfers.	6 Channel High Definition Audio Integrated 6-channel HD Audio CODEC delivering advanced multi-channel audio and bringing you the experience of home theater-quality sound.
Graphics Embedded Graphics Embedded	NVRAID Uniquely allows users to assign an extra disk to any RAID volume so that should a disk failure occur NVIDIA RAID will automatically remote the failed disk and replace it with the spare.
MediaShield Protects and secures your digital media assets with RAID 5,SATA 3Gb/s,and PATA drives.Suite of features include the MediaShield user interface, flexible RAID configurations (RAID5,0,1,0+1),NVIDIA Disk Alert System, decicated spare disk protection, fast media transfers.	PCI EXPRCESS x16 Delivers up to a 4x increase in graphics and 2x I/O bandwidth for smooth multimedia performance
ROHS Choose an environment-friendly, fully RoHS-compliant ECS product as the foundation for keeping harmful substances out of our ecosystem.

 

Specifications

CPU	AMD Phenom processor (Socket AM2+) AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron processor High-performance Hyper Transport CPU interface Support transfer rate of 2000/1600/1200/800/400 mega-transfers per second Note: This board supports CPU up to 95W TDP only
Chipset	NVIDIA GeForce 6100/nForce 430 NVIDIA MCP61P Single Chipset
Graphics	Share Memory: Maximum up to 256MB On Chip (NVIDIA GeForce 6100/P-based, 2D/3D graphic engine) Integrated DirectX 9 graphics processor
Memory	2 x 240-pin DDR2 DIMM socket support up to 16 GB (4GB realistic) Dual-channel DDR2 memory architecture Support DDR2 800/667/533/400 DDR2 SDRAM
Expansion Slot	1 x PCI Express x16 slot 1 x PCI Express x1 slot 2 x PCI slots
Storage	Support by NVIDIA GeForce 6100P 2x Ultra DMA133/100/66 devices 4x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1, RAID5 configuration
Audio	Realtek ALC662 6-channel audio Compliant with HD audio specification
LAN	Broadcom AC13 10/100 LAN
Rear Panel I/O	1 x PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors 1 x Serial port (COM 1) 1 x VGA port 1 x RJ45 LAN connector 4 x USB ports 1 x Parallel port (LPT1) (optional) 1 x Audio port (line-in, line-out, mic in)
Internal I/O Connectors and Headers	1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V connector 1 x FDD connector 1 x IDE connector 4 x Serial ATA connectors 1 x Speaker header 1 x SPDIF out header 1 x IrDA for SIR header (optional) 3 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 6 USB ports 1 x Front panel switch/LED header 1 x Front panel audio header 1 x CD in header CPUFAN/SYSFAN connectors
System Bios	Award BIOS with 8MB Flash ROM Supports Plug and Play, STR/STD, Hardware monitor, Multi Boot, DMI Supports ACPI revision 1.0 specification
Form Factor	Micro-ATX Size, 244mm*214mm

• 64 Bit – Allows platform to access more memory and larger files. Large memory intensive programs can see dramatic performance increases.
• PCI Express X16 – Delivers greater bandwith over the traditional AGP 8X interface and supporting the latest high-performance graphics cards.
• USB 2.0 High-Speed – USB 2.0 is the latest connectivity standard which delivers transfer speed up to 480Mb/s for easy connectivity and ultra-fast data transfers.
• Serial ATA – Serial ATA is a revolutionary replacement of ATA technology that provides superior performance. With up to 150MB/s or 300MB/s data transfer rate, Serial ATA is faster than Parallel ATA, while providing 100% software compatibility.
• Audio Integrated – Onboard high-quality audio CODEC supports uncompromising audio quality, bringing a more vivid sound experience and great audio without having to buy advance sound cards.
• Ethernet – Provides onboard Ethernet solution to your network or broadband connection without having to buy an extra LAN card.
• Video Integrated – Provides 128MB of onboard video RAM, with Pixel Shader 3.0 support as well as top graphics options for today’s high-detail gaming enviornments.

The box is pretty small, just barely large enough to accomodate the motherboard itself. Inside the box are standard motherboard fare: a driver CD, Getting Started Guide, a paper manual, SATA cable, IDE cable, I/O shield and a driver CD.

The PCB itself is colored purple, and is laid out fairly well. The motherboard has 2 DDR-2 slots (or one bank). The motherboard’s chipset supports up to 16GB of RAM, but you can only squeeze in 4GB if you buy two 2GB sticks, which are pretty standard today. Unless you’re using a 64-bit OS then you probably won’t be able to see all 4GB of memory. The floppy, IDE, and motherboard power connectors are located right near the front of the board, which should give most drives direct access to these ports without routing wide ribbon cables all over the place.

Below this area is the Southbridge, which has a low-profile passive heatsink on it. This chipset heatsink resides right in front of a PCI and PCI-e slot, but unless you have a weird card then it should clear just fine. I like to put a fan on passive chipset heatsinks, so you may not want to put anything in the first PCI slot. Below this area are the standard internal I/O connectors such as case wire hookups and USB headers. The bottom edge of the board has connectors for the internal audio codec: HD_Audio, CD_IN and SPDIF.

The board has room to accomodate four add-on cards. The x16 PCI-Express slot is colored a bright orange, and is closest to the CPU. Below this is a x1 PCIe slot, which also has the motherboards clock battery next to it, but there shouldn’t be any clearance issues. Below this are two legacy PCI slots. The first PCI slot is right next to the southbridge chipset, so I would recommend only using the second slot unless you absolutely have to.

The CPU area has plenty of room to accomodate today’s large heatsinks, like the Evercool Transformer 6 Heatsink reviewed here. There is a standard 4-pin motherboard power connector right beside the AM2+ socket. Unfortunately, there are no solid-state capacitors to clean the power coming to the chipset. The mosfets appear to be a 3-phase design, but use cheaper components. Above the socket is a standard 4-pin fan connector, which allows the motherboard to monitor and adjust the speed of the fan based on the die temperature.

The I/O panel is pretty standard for an inexpensive board such as this. From left to right there is a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse port, LPT and serial port (I don’t know why these are even used in modern board designs). To the right of the COM port is an analog VGA port. To the right of this are four USB 2.0 ports and a single 10/100 LAN port (I would have liked to see a gigabit LAN, however). To the right of this are three audio connectors, which are usually assigned Line out, microphone, and line in.

Alrighty, well now you know the hype that ECM has provided for their motherboard. Now I’m going to throw it together with my own various parts to see what it can do. I did a little investigative work and found that this board is not exactly prime for overclocking. So this seems like this board will be a good test for my overclocking skills. I am providing the following additions to make the mobo operational:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU
• 2GB of Kingston DDR2-800
• Evercool Transformer 6 heatsink (read our review)
• Coolermaster chipset cooler
• Corsair TX750 Watt PSU (read our review)
• Seagate 7200.11 1TB HDD

The motherboard did not come with a processor, and this is not uncommon. So since I just upgraded to an AMD 6000+ Dual Core, I am going to use the old 3800+ that came with the original mobo. I don’t want to use my premium processor for an overclocking experiment.

Everything seemed to go in smooth, but I noticed that there was a slight problem. While I’m not going to be using a video card this time around, I found that with the Transformer 6 in place there is going to be very little space between a PCI-e video card and the heatsink. And while the Transformer is bigger than many heatsinks on the market today, it is not much bigger than many of the ones that are coming out. Heatsinks have hit an all time high when it comes to size, and they just keep getting bigger. So if you are planning on sticking a large ‘sink in this thing, I would think twice. I would say a nice Zalman would be a better choice.

For any speed and benchmarking I’m going to use SiSoftware Sandra. I swear by it’s ability to push a PC to its limit and see what it is really made of. For this review I am going to do various testing both at stock speeds and overclocked to see what it is capable of. For temperature readings I am going to be using SpeedFan. It’s free and it gets the job done. So first, let’s do a few quick tests to see what happens at stock settings.

I admit, the chipset surprised me a little. Most Nvidia chipsets offer little to nothing by the way of power and bandwith, but this one offers over 7GB/s of bandwith. I find that impressive compared to my experience with other Nvidia-based motherboards. The memory controller offered Dual Channel with up to 4GB of RAM on 32-bit systems and 16GB of RAM on 64-bit systems. And while the movement toward 1000Mhz DDR3 is slowly mobilizing, the 800Mhz DDR2 availability on this motherboard at over 12GB/s of bandwith is still very worthy of the average gamer.

Now it’s time to see what overclocking capabilities this thing has. After much tinkering, I came to a couple of conclusions that led to one big one. First, there is no way to adjust the voltage for the processor in the Soft Menu. The CMOS menu for this motherboard offers only one way to overclock, and that is to adjust the Bus Speed and multiplier.

But since the multiplier is already maxed out at 5X, that really only leaves the Bus settings. So I started off by adjusting from stock 200Mhz to 210Mhz. This gave me a very stable 2.1Ghz processing speed. Then I went to 2.2Ghz, which proved to be just as stable. But at 2.24, I began to have longer booting times and it would hang at the boot screen about half the time. Without access to the core voltage, overclocking beyond 2.2Ghz just isn’t worth it.

Which led to my final conclusion, this motherboard is absolute crap when it comes to overclocking. I realize that my farily-standard Kingston RAM is a possible factor, but this motherboard has no voltage options to push the hardware when you reach a stopping block.

I was staying stable at 2.2Ghz (a 10% overclock), but anything beyond that either hung up or wouldn’t boot at all. So while most of the settings and speeds are very nice on this particular motherboard for standard gaming and use, any hardcore gamer or overclocker would do well to just steer clear of this one. Although, in the long run, I am happy that I gained an extra 200Mhz on each core. But what good is that going to do me when in most gaming scenarios? Not much.

One final thought. I replaced my old Asus motherboard with this one after my PCIe slot got fried by a bad PSU. At the time, I was short of cash, and this was a great buy at only $50.00 on sale. The normal price is $69.00. So if you are in a pinch and need a motherboard quickly, then this is the way to go. But if you can afford a better one, I suggest you buy one. This motherboard can support Athlon X2 and Phenom up to 3.0Ghz, but can only handle 95W of voltage to the CPU, so overclocking with higher processors could prove challenging.

	REPORT CARD : ECS EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2 Motherboard category rating comments Quality 3 Standard MOSFETS and a mediocre nVidia chipset. Innovation 3 A pretty basic board with basic features. Performance 3 Pretty standard fare, a 10% overclock, but able to take many modern processors Installation 4 Good room around the CPU, and thoughtful layout for internal peripherals Value 4 You get a decent board for $50 FINAL VERDICT: 3 out of 5 stars