ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid

Not often seen, this mobo supports both Socket 939 and Socket 775 CPUs.

Not often seen, this mobo supports both Socket 939 and Socket 775 CPUs. The idea is to provide a platform one can easily switch from an Intel Socket 775 processor to an AMD Socket 939 CPU – or vice versa – without the need to change motherboards. This is naturally a pretty decent idea because replacing a mobo can be a real bastard sometimes. To install a Socket 939 CPU, you need to install the ‘SIMA platform converter’ card.

Usually it’s sold separately, but Protac have nicely included it. This basically replaces the four DDR2 DIMM slots with two DDR DIMM slots, the existing CPU socket and the Northbridge. It plugs into the ‘EliteBus’ which looks exactly like a 16x PCI-E slot followed by a single 1x slot.

Where and how the heatsink can be installed on the SIMA card is concerning, as there is very little space to move. Our heatsink fins were pointing in the direction of the memory and mobo, which isn’t ideal for decent airflow or long term placement. Beware that the heatsink doesn’t bulk out perpendicular to the retention sides, as you’ll otherwise have issues with installing memory and the SIMA card itself.

A water cooling block would be perfect. Prior to jacking the SIMA card in, to activate it, 24 jumpers in total must be removed from either side of the slot. For ease of use, these should have been two whole sets of 12 jumpers instead of individuals (oh yes). Have fun not losing these. These jumpers re-route some important things, such as which BIOS chip, CPU and memory slots should be used and the relocation of the video card down a slot. Though sporting two, only one of the PCI Express 16x slots can be used at a time, with a dedicated slot for each of the CPUs.

For testing we used a GF 6800 Ultra and a WD 36GB Raptor, with two matched 512MB sticks each of DDR2-667 and DDR-400, both running in dual channel. All was not rosy however – while the Athlon FX55 worked fine, unfortunately we were unable to get either of our Pentium 3.73GHz Extreme Editions to function. They were strangely detected with a locked 14x multiplier on a 100MHz FSB. We could up the 100MHz to a max of 250MHz, but due to restrictive memory ratios, this had our sorry 667MHz DDR2 sticks attempting to run at 1000MHz (on the slowest ratio, 1:4). We eventually settled on a Pentium 660, at 3.6GHz. We expect a BIOS update will sort the locked issue out quicksmart.

In terms of performance, the DDR400 really struts its stuff. The new bridge has no obvious impact on performance.

To see how it stacked up while playing games, we put Doom 3 (800 x 600, high) through its paces. Instead of loading the timedemo once to get it into memory then averaging out results, we restarted Windows each run. This gives us an idea on how the board handles shifting around data and playing games in real-time, as opposed to the textures already being in memory. This had the 660 firing off at 68.9fps and the FX55 squirting out 88.4fps. Not too shabby at all. With the expansion card included, it’s a decent buy.

This is a top platform with a nice dollop of features with the ability to quickly switch CPU.

An arousingly cool and weird mobo – it’s great to see such a level of innovation.

And no, you can’t run the CPUs in tandem!