UEFI Features
ECS included the latest revision of their UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) EZ BIOS with the the Z97-Machine motherboard. The UEFI offers full keyboard and mouse support while using the BIOS pages with enhanced mouse navigation supported by right clicking the mouse – goes back to previous view if inside a settings pop-up or on a sub-menu page. ECS did not include any type of screen capture utility in the UEFI.
While much simpler when compared with other motherboard manufacturer's UEFI implementations, the ECS implementation is clean and masterfully designed. I found the mouse and keyboard responsiveness within the UEFI to be usable with no noticeable lag.
UEFI Notable Features
The ECS UEFI implementation contains no fancy interfaces or ground-breaking designs, but it functions well and has an intuitive layout. As long as you can find the settings you're looking for and the interface is responsive, any other additions are little more than glitz and window dressing. The UEFI has two operation modes – Basic and Advanced.
Basic Mode
The Basic mode page houses a graphical interface with high level board, temperature, voltage, and fan speed information shown.
Advanced Mode, M.I.B. X section
The Advanced Mode interface houses the more advanced board related setting with all overclocking and performance related settings centralized under the M.I.B. X tab. M.I.B. X stands for MB Intelligent BIOS X, designed with a series of sub-menus containing logically divided performance settings.
UEFI Walk through – Performance-related Settings, Advanced Mode
Main tab
M.I.B. X tab
M.I.B. X tab, CPU OverClocking Configuration page
M.I.B. X tab, Memory Configuration page
M.I.B. X tab, Memory Configuration page continued
M.I.B. X tab, North Bridge Configuration page
M.I.B. X tab, Over Voltage Configuration page
M.I.B. X tab, Over Voltage Configuration page continued
M.I.B. X tab, Profile Configuration page
M.I.B. X tab, Profile Configuration, Profile Select list popup
Advanced tab
Advanced tab, PC Health Status page
Advanced tab, PC Health Status page, Smart Fan Function page
Advanced tab, PC Health Status page, Smart Fan Function, Smart Fan Mode popup
Advanced tab, CPU Configuration page
So if the board had a better
So if the board had a better location of the CMOS battery it would received a gold award? lol.
Anyway, I see the lack of SATA express and having only 4 sata ports very fitting for most value-minded buyers like me. Having an M.2 SSD is like a luxury compared to the cheaper 2.5″ SSDs
That baseclock issue may be remedied by a simple BIOS fix if the VRM hardware is up to par to similar performance boards.
Anyway, good write-up!
did you get m.2 ssd to boot? how?
One of the questions I always
One of the questions I always wait to see an answer for, is that you and the Manufactures, all talk about USB Ports on the Main Boards, But unless I miss it, it would great to know if the area single Chip per bank or a Chip per port, meaning if like this one, it has 4 USB 3.0 ports on the back, If I connect 4 USB 3.0 Drives, will I be getting the theoretical 5Gb/s on each port? I always made you when I buy 3.0 expansion card, the if it had 4 ports the total bandwidth was 20Gb/s. (there are very few out there)
Or I’m I to assume there best scenario for every board?, that “word” should I be looking for? Channels? Or should Still should be buying add-on cards?
If not, is there a Board out there that each port is a separate “channel”?
On the board, all USB 3.0
On the board, all USB 3.0 ports are controlled by the Z97 chipset and feed into a single root hub. According to the Intel spec, the Z97 USB 3.0 controller sits on the PCIe bus with a maximum bandwidth of 5 Gbps (which is equivalent to a single PCIe lane – x1). Since all ports go through a single hub, all connected devices share the 5 Gbps available bandwidth.
In my experience, the integrated Intel chipset control USB 3.0 ports always have better performance than those controlled via a 3rd party controller embedded in the board. This is most likely because the 3rd part controller has to share the PCIe bus and bandwidth with other devices/ports in the system.
If you went with a PCIe card for USB 3.0, the card would be limited by the bandwidth it is granted by the PCIe slot, which would most like also be x1 or 5Gbps. So if you added a USB 3.0 PCIe controller card, you would get another 5Gbps, shared between the ports on the card.
Hope that helps…
[quote]Hope that
[quote]Hope that helps…[/quote]
It helps me anyway! Thanks. Also appreciate all the photos; very useful.
Thanks for your response, I
Thanks for your response, I like to hear back from you after you view this link from the USB 3.0 Card I usually get and refer to on my comments. This are 4 dedicated and claim a total of 20 Gbps (4 x 5)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_RocketU1144C.htm
I’m disappointed to find out the USB ports on most Motherboards are shared (I seen some with 2 Controllers, that may give me 2 channels, guess). I happy to report, that with the Highpoint above card, I get close to 80% of the USB 3.0 speed when using 3 USB drives at the same time (comparing it so a single drive in use on the same card), sadly I don’t have an new Motherboards with 3.0 ports yet to compare.
One of the biggest problem that this card solves for me, is that I often copy data between external drives and with this card I get much better performance in that scenario (I compared it to copying the date from one drive to the computer and then back out to the other drive, never mind the time to takes to do that).
Thanks again, please let me know your thoughts on the Highpoint cards.
Thanks
Thanks