ECS G33T-M2

"Even with its terrific performance, we think the absence of a parallel IDE port is inexcusable, thus we can’t give our Golden Award seal to it, and that is why we are awarding it with our Silver Award."

"While those who plan on any type of overclocking will rightfully dismiss the ECS G33T-M2, those looking for an inexpensive board to pair with one of INTEL's budget Core 2 Duo processors will find the G33T-M2 to be a good choice to build an HTPC or inexpensive workstation PC."

"The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard proved to be a stable platform to build a system around and had solid performance numbers to go along with the stability. If you don't need any PATA drives then this Micro-ATX motherboard should fit the bill!"

"The ECS G33T-M2 motherboard is a decent board that does what it says it can. In the gaming results, we can see that the onboard graphics did slightly better than its AMD competitor. When you look at all of the results as a whole, this motherboard came out slightly on top. I was impressed with the onboard graphics because I was sure that they were going to be worse than how it turned out to be. If you look at the results from F.E.A.R., the G33T-M2 completely destroyed the AMD board, but it didn't make too much sense as to why that happened because in all of the other results, both boards were practically neck-and-neck. Some of the synthetic benchmark results can be a result of the slightly different hardware setups for each motherboard, but for the most part, both systems were very similar in all of the components. I didn't have any problems with installing this motherboard or getting it all set up, so that is a plus. I was really disappointed that this motherboard did not have IDE ports on it, but it does have the newer format - SATA. The connectors on the motherboard were plentiful and I never wished there was another port for use. For the price of this motherboard, you really get good performance from the onboard graphics. This motherboard would be a great solution for anyone looking for an inexpensive motherboard who may occasionally play a game or two and is needed for rather basic tasks."

"The ECS G33T-M2 is an excellent platform for building your HTPC that could second as a gaming box. The integrated chipset and as a totally silent solution, it allows you to run it as your HTPC while the PCI-E x16 slot and the ability to reach 470MHz FSB says it all for a gamer. The four memory slots as well as the four SATA ports make the board compete against a full sized ATX board while giving you the flexibility of using it in a micro-ATX chassis such as the LANBox HT."