The ECS GF8200A motherboard is part of the ECS Black Series and uses an NVIDIA GeForce 8200 single chipset in order to support 95W TDP AMD Phenom quad-core processors up to HT 5200 MT/s with Hyper Transport 3.0 technology links. The board also supports DDR2 1066MHz memory kits and features like GeForce Boost. With the economy doing poorly the need for budget boards is higher than ever and this board can be found for just $69.99 at Newegg.
You do not have to spend big bucks to get a great board. In fact, there is no reason why you cannot spend $100 or less on a board and get what you need as far as performance in concerned. In fact, with the Phenom II coming out and hitting record speeds (as we saw in our preview a few weeks ago) you should be able to pick up a Phenom II CPU and the ECS 8200A for a great price. Even now, you could pick up the Phenom 8450 Toliman for right at $95and this motherboard for less than $170. That is a nice and fast upgrade for the price! Deals are popping up all over for 4gb DDR2 800MHz kits for well under $30... that is the barebones of a new computer for under $200...
This board works just fine =) I don't use the hybrid as the 9600gt doesn't support it. However I have had this board for a while now and I haven't had any problems. The Vista 64 setup went off with out a hitch. And my XP install from my old board took the fact that it was hooked up to a new system just fine. I ran the drivers for it and everything seems to be on the XP install that had come from an old Asrock system.
AMD 960T OC'ed to 4gz
ASRock 970 EXTREME4 AM3+ AMD 970
2 X G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000)(16gb)
EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2682-KR GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16
