ECS C51G-M754 Motherboard Review

Introduction

ECS C51G-M754 is a socket 754 motherboard based on the latest NVIDIA chipset with integrated graphics (a.k.a. on-board video), GeForce 6100, which also provides PCI Express slots. In this review we will compare its performance to commercial entry-level video cards, namely GeForce 6200 TurboCache and GeForce 6200, to other chipsets with on-board graphics (VIA K8M800 and SiS 760 GX) and also to another motherboard based on GeForce 6100.

Figure 1: ECS C51G-M754.

Besides being a very simple motherboard targeted to socket 754 CPUs (socket 754 version of Athlon 64 and Sempron processors), as you can see in Figure 1, it has one x16 PCI Express slot, allowing you to disable its on-board video and install a real video card later, if you want. It also provides one x1 PCI Express slot, feature not implemented on the other GeForce 6100 motherboard we reviewed (Foxconn WinFast 6100K8MB-RS).

Figure 2: This motherboard carries one x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI express slot and two PCI slots.

This motherboard uses nForce 410 south bridge, having on-board video, audio and LAN, bringing also two Serial ATA ports supporting the new 300 MB/s speed (SATA-300). It has two DDR-DIMM sockets, accepting up to 2 GB of up to DDR400/PC3200 memory; its on-board audio is controlled by the nForce 410 south bridge using the Realtek ALC655 codec (6-channel audio, 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio); its LAN is also controlled by its south bridge, using Realtek RTL8201CL chip to make the interface with the physical layer; eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered directly to the motherboard and four available through an I/O bracket, but the board doesn’t come with any bracket; and two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports, one soldered on the motherboard and the other available through an I/O bracket (the board doesn’t come with any bracket), controlled by VIA VT6307 chip. This is a feature rarely seen on motherboards with on-board video.

Figure 3: Two serial ATA ports and nForce 410 south bridge.

We must mention that on the other GeForce 6100 motherboard we reviewed (Foxconn WinFast 6100K8MB-RS), the south bridge chip had a passive heatsink on, feature not implemented by ECS on C51G-M754.

Figure 4: Connectors on the motherboard back, pay attention to the FireWire port soldered directly on the motherboard.

You can read more about the GeForce 6100 chipset family in our article NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and nForce 400 Chipset Family.

Theoretically this motherboard requires a 24-pin power supply (ATX12V v2.x standard, used on almost all motherboards based on PCI Express) but you can install a 20-pin power supply on it without any problem. ECS put a sticker showing you which pins to use when connection a 20-pin power supply, see Figure 5.

Figure 5: Power supply connector; the sticker shows which pins to use when installing a 20-pin power supply.

Before going to our benchmarking, let’s recap the main features of this motherboard.