Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Overlooking the overclocking aspect of the board, the ECS P45T-A motherboard performed very well. It stood up well to the EVGA 780i and at $105 before rebate it is a bargain for those of you looking for stock or minor overclocking performance. If you factor in the $15 rebate that Newegg is doing the final price on the board is just $94.99 with free shipping. The inclusion of RAID functionality, decent onboard audio, and plenty of connectivity it makes for a motherboard that is hard to pass up.  If one is looking for a CrossFire platform or an upgradeto get new features like PCIe 2.0 then this motherboard should be on your short list of options that don't break the bank.

When you do include overclocking into this review, though, the board utterly falls on its face. With 65nm Core 2 processors, sub 4GHz performance is common and even with some 45nm Core 2 processors it can be a struggle to break 4GHz, but with a Wolfdale you typically expect to choose between 4.2GHz and 4.5GHz. If you are looking for a board to game with on a daily basis and ignore overclocking, the ECS P45T-A is an excellent choice. If you fancy tweaking your rig and exploring all the BIOS options available to you, this is not the board for you.

The ECS P45T-A is a fantastic price/performance motherboard and I have faith that it will continue to run at stock speeds until the end of time. This board is perfect for a budget gaming board, a secondary LAN board, or even an office workstation. Couple this board with CrossFire HD4850's and 4 gigabytes of DDDR2 and you are looking at a strong gaming platform.

Legit Bottom Line: The ECS P45T-A is the lowest priced Intel P45 Express based motherboard with the Intel ICH10R south bridge and is the perfect option for a budget platform. Overclocking may not be its forte; however, it is a solid system with a solid price that can do RAID right out of the box.

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