Continued:

ECS asserts that although many people won’t exactly be thrilled with an ECS + SiS combination board, it ensures reliability and stability to its users. Whether the statement has any merit is for you to decide. We won’t comment further until we have an actual sample for thorough testing. Interestingly enough, ECS pointed out that SiS might not be the only chipset it may use once the board has been launched. The company is currently looking into alternatives, such as chipsets from Intel and NVIDIA to incorporate in the concept. ECS said the price to performance ratio of the board will be rather exceptional to make it a desirable deal for those that do require the latest features, but aren’t into overclocking all that much. ECS further stated that it’s also a possibility that the company could look into designing a stock AMD board due to its popularity in the enthusiast market with an add-on daughter-card for Intel CPUs.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that ECS pointed out was related to thermal issues. ECS apparently received more than a decent number of e-mails regarding the use of heavy heatsinks from the likes of Thermalright and Thermaltake. Many people are concerned that putting a heavy heatsink on the daughter-card would physically break it. ECS acknowledged the issue and pointed out that they are continuing to research on the matter and will come up with a reliable cooling solution when the board is ready to ship. The key goal with the PF88 Extreme motherboard is flexibility at a lower price point for those that don’t upgrade their systems regularly.

In other plans, ECS said it might also come up with a solution where the user only has to switch a socket on the board without the need of an independent daughter-card. The inter-switch-able socket will debut with a BTX version of the same motherboard.

This is all the hard information we have available directly from ECS. Please check back for Part II of this series with our initial thoughts on the market value of the board and a general overview of where ECS is headed with its Extreme line of products, specifically the hybrid motherboards.