The ECS-KA3-MVP Extreme is a good motherboard with several excellent attributes, but it has some rough spots. The funky BIOS quirks need to be fixed. Once you’re in Windows, the board is fine but it shouldn’t take three minutes to get there. The manual needs to explain things better, and include RAID settings. Third, the BIOS should be more generous with the voltage settings for both CPU and RAM.
Despite these minor issues, it does perform well in acutal use, and has no problems keeping up with nForce5 motherboards. There were no stability problems at all during the review period. At ~$140 this motherboard is a lot cheaper than other similarly featured motherboards (Foxconn C51XEM2AA and Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe)… and it can run two ATI cards in Crossfire mode.
If ECS can get those things fixed, this will be a much more inviting product for novices, and people who want to just plug-and-play, and I would have no problem recommending it as the very best ATI/AMD solution for socket AM2. I’ve really enjoyed working with this board. It is the most fun I’ve ever had with an ECS product. If you consider yourself an expert or an adventurous person, and you want an AMD solution, you’ll find a lot to like about the KA3 MVP.
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
