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ECS Elitegroup and ASUS P67 Preview

Introduction

The new CPU architecture from Intel is almost ready for release. The date is set to January 5th 2011. With the new architecture comes new chipsets, and that means that the motherboard manufactures once again have to compete in making the best product. Us, here on TWEAK.dk, have received three new motherboards, and will give you, the readers, a chance to get a sneak-peak on these new motherboards. There is one from ECS Elitegroup and two from ASUS; ECS Elitegroup P67H2-A, ASUS P8P67 and P8P67 Deluxe. The motherboards are all from the P(erformance)-series of Intel’s chipsets, and have therefore no integrated graphics support. 

ECS Elitegroup P67H2-A - Black Series

The first thing we will take a look at, is the ECS Elitegroup P67H2-A. This is a normal-sized ATX motherboard in white, brown and black colors.

 

P67H2-A comes with 3 x PCI-E 2.0 x16, 2x PCI-E x1 and 2x PCI ports. ECS Elitegroup have chosen to use a Lucid Hydra chip to handle the PCI-E ports. This means that it is possible to match exactly the graphics cards you want, even if it is 2x ATI HD 5870, 2x NVIDIA GTX 460 or a combination of the two; 1x ATI HD 5870 + 1x NVIDIA GTX 460. 



If we take a look at the external connections we will find (from left to right) a clear CMOS button, , 1x PS/2, 6x USB 2.0, 2x eSata, 2x Gigabit ethernet, 4x USB 3.0, Toslink S/PDIF, and lastly 5 audio connections, which makes up for a 8-channel sound connection. This means, that we got plenty of connection possibilities to connect whatever one would want. 

The motherboard supports two SATA 3 (SATA-600) ports. Next to those, we find two SATA 2 (SATA-300) ports, and at the top you can barely see a turn on/off button, and a reset button.