ECS HDC-I Motherboard Review - PAGE 4

Overclocking was dead simple on the ECS HDC-I, as the only option available to users to tweak is a predefined Turbo Mode. That means it was also a boring experience. Normally we would be disappointed with such a limited BIOS, but this time it is tough to do so, as the overclock achieved through Turbo Mode is a hefty 33%. That's right; the E-350 can clock in at 2133MHz. The memory multiplier obviously is brought down to 3:8, or else it would have been clocked at almost 1800MHz. The reference clock increases by 2MHz randomly sometimes too, so that's why in the following screenshot the E-350 is actually at 2167MHz.

Update 11/22/11: Neoseeker has learned from a few forum members that the Turbo Mode is not featured on mass production units, supposedly because of stability issues.

It's pretty impressive considering the fact that the Gigabyte board, even in manual mode, did not allow anything higher than 120MHz on the reference clock, from the stock 100MHz.

So for that particular reason, the overclocked scores from the Gigabyte offering as well as those from the Athlon II X2 and Sempron will be compared. It is going to be interesting, as the manual overclocking of the Gigabyte board allowed for a higher memory frequency, but the core clock was much lower.