14 DAY TRIAL // With the impending arrival of Sandy Bridge CPUs, it makes sense that motherboard makers would announce platforms capable of supporting them, and ECS went a little farther and even added support for NVIDIA-AMD mixed graphics.
Making a motherboard capable of mixing AMD and NVIDIA video cards was not possible until the Hydra SoC came out, several months ago
Developed by LucidLogix, this system-on-chip allows any two or more video boards to work together, regardless of manufacturer or model.
The new platform that ECS is designing, according to a report, goes by the name of the P67H2-A and has been pictured, though it is only a pre-release version that has yet to be perfected.
Apparently, the socket LGA 1155 is used, which is powered by a 14-phase VRM and handles four DDR3 DIMM dual-channel memory slots.
The motherboard also features three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16, x16, NC / x16, x8, x8 most likely) as well as a pair of PCI Express x1 and two PCI slots.
This should allow a fair bit of video prowess to be reached, provided the end-users have two or more video cards worth combining.
The platform also boasts dual Gigabit Ethernet and a pair of NEC USB 3.0 controllers that support a total of four ports, two on the rear panel and another two via header, for the front panel.
Additionally, there are six SATA 3 Gbps ports, two SATA 6 Gbps controllers (for two internal ports) and a number of USB 2.0 ports, plus eSATA.
Overclockers may be especially interested in knowing that the memory slots can cope with speeds of up to 2,600 MHz.
As has been stated, the pictured model is just a pre-release prototype, the genuine version set to come out later, in time for Intel's new range of central processing units.