In Figure 1 you can have a good look at ECS GF9300T-A. Pay attention and you will see another model name printed on it: “MCP7AT-A,” which is the name ECS was using before the official launch of GeForce 9300 chipset.

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Figure 1: ECS GF9300T-A motherboard.

The first thing that caught our eye was the size of this motherboard. Usually motherboards with on-board video use the microATX form factor – including GF7100PVT-M3 from ECS, which is based on GeForce 7100 chipset – but ECS GF9300T-A is an exception, using the regular ATX form factor.

This motherboard provides one x16 PCI Express 2.0 slot, allowing you to install a “real” video card on it. The chipset supports GeForce Boost technology, which allows certain low-end video cards like GeForce 8400 GS and GeForce 8500 GT to work in parallel with the on-board video in SLI mode, which provides a higher performance than a single add-on graphics card alone.

Besides the PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot this motherboard also has two PCI Express x1 slots and three regular PCI slots.

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Figure 2: Motherboard slots.

Another highlight from this motherboard is the presence of four memory sockets. Usually low-end motherboards have only two memory sockets, so having four of them on this board is a blessing, as it will help you adding more memory in the future without needing to replace your current memory modules. This motherboard supports DDR2 modules up to 800 MHz, supporting up to 8 GB if 2 GB modules are used. This motherboard support dual channel technology, so you need to install two or four memory modules in order to achieve the maximum performance this motherboard can provide. If two  modules are used, they should be installed on sockets with the same color.

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Figure 3: Memory modules.