ECS PF88 Extreme Mainboard

Enthusiasts are a fickle bunch of people, if you ask me. One minute they're swooning over the creamy, hard-to-elucidate quality that Intel brings to the table with its Hyper-Threading-equipped Pentium 4 processors. Next minute, the same enthusiasts are having performance pangs that only AMD's Athlon 64 S939 CPUs can satiate. That's why it's not uncommon for informed users to jump ship every so often, to really see if the grass is greener on the other side. The most fundamental question that a prospective PC purchaser needs to make, then, is which platform to go with. Once chosen, due to chipset and socket differences, you're stuck with a particular platform unless you take the drastic step of changing motherboards, which entails a long afternoon of hardware and software changes. Think about it, no other PC-related component is so much hassle, and changing back is just as much trouble. ATI and NVIDIA's graphics cards all share the same interfaces, so it's a simple matter of uninstalling drivers, popping in another card, and installing new drivers; a 10-minute job at best. Changing system memory is a cinch, and SATA hard drives can now be plugged, on-the-fly, into most modern board's ports. The ideal state of affairs would be the ability to run both Intel and AMD's CPUs on one board, with one operating system. Whilst technically feasible, ATX PCB considerations and the extra cost of paying for a socket that may or may not be used has always stopped the adventurous motherboard makers from having a go. ECS, however, has decided to throw away any pre-conceived mainboard design ideas by launching a single motherboard with the capacity to support most of today's top-end performance platforms, beginning with Intel's LGA775 and AMD's Socket-939. You'll be wondering how it's done. Read on to find out


Intel® SE440BX-2 Motherboard
Last Known Issues

Latest BIOS and drivers The BIOS identifier for the Intel® SE440BX-2 Motherboard is 4S4EB2X0.86A. The current BIOS version and current audio drivers for the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard are available. Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard BIOS or audio drivers are not interchangeable with the Intel® SE440BX Motherboard (and vice versa). Intel SE440BX Motherboard or Intel SE440BX-2 MotherboardYou can identify your Intel motherboard by the Altered Assembly (AA) number or the BIOS version string.Click here for Processors supported by the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard.Click here for Memory configurations supported by the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard Secondary IDE change not workingThe retail version of Microsoft Windows* 95 may not recognize the Intel® 82371EB PIIX4e IDE controller used on Intel motherboards, causing the BIOS to disable the secondary IDE channel. This can result in IDE devices (such as CD-ROM drives) not being detected or disappearing after the system is rebooted. A utility is available to update the MSHDC.INF file and resolve the issue. Windows 95 also may fail to recognize a CD-ROM drive that does not comply with the ATAPI specification. PCI audio and IRQ issuesThe Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard uses one PCI IRQ for audio to function with a PnP operating system such as Windows* 9x. One additional ISA IRQ is dedicated for legacy audio support. Legacy audio support is used for DOS-based applications and games that are SoundBlaster* compatible. Most DOS-based applications and games only use SoundBlaster-compatible legacy audio requiring the use of an ISA IRQ. By disabling the ISA legacy audio support in the operating system the dedicated ISA IRQ is freed, thus using only one PCI IRQ. DOS applications and games that require SoundBlaster audio support will have no audio output if ISA legacy audio is disabled. Note: PCI interrupts are shareable per PCI specification 2.0 and 2.1. IRQ9 not available to ISA add-in cardsIRQ9 is designated for the power management feature of the PIIX4E controller. IDE device not displayed during power-upAll IDE devices must be ATA4 compliant and the cable length is limited to 18 inches. IDE devices that are not selected as auto-detect in the BIOS setup are not displayed as part of the Power On Self Test (POST). Will my ATA-66 hard drive work on the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard?The IDE controller integrated into the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard supports Ultra DMA modes 0,1, and 2. Ultra DMA mode 2, also known as ATA-33 or Ultra DMA 33, is the highest transfer mode supported by the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard. The motherboard hardware cannot support the maximum transfer rate of the ATA-66 drives. ATA66 hard drives will only operate up to ATA-33 on the Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard. Please refer to the Technical Product Specification and the Motherboard Specification Update for more complete details on the various transfer modes.


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