There are known issues with ATI cards and the K7S5A. Several post are available at the
OCWorkbench Forum. Check the current and archived ECS forum. I installed a Radeon 9700 2 weeks ago and have had the same
'8 beep' problem as other users have reported on the OC forums. I have tried 5 different BIOS'es (4 tweakers and 1 official), adjusted every available setting (PCI latency, AGP, etc), and still have the 8 beep problem. Apparently ECS, SIS, and ATI are all finger pointing, but they do admit to problems using ATI cards on SIS boards. Funny thing is, after the beeps, I hit the warm reset button, and it boots and runs like a charm with absolutly no stability issues ( I have never had stability issues with any of 5 K7S5A's; 116 fps flyby @ 1600x1200 in UT3K ). I don't think it's hardware related because I took the appropriate precautions - 500 W PSU, Crucial memory, etc. It's only an annoyance, but I have ordered a VIA replacement board to slove the problem.
Details:
Tried the usual tricks; clearing CMOS, another K7S5A, different PSUs (500W Powmax, 300W Antec), different RAM (DDR and SD), card has its own power line from PSU, etc
I am using a Sapphire 9700 non-pro.
In both boards, the problem was fixed when an nvidia card was used.
Links:
Link
Ripped from post:
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"NOTE: This motherboard may experience hardware compatibility issues with certain brands/models of video cards including (but not limited to) the following.
Incompatible Products:
ATI products (most of them) Voodoo 5 5000
Trident chipsets (some) Most video cards with built-in TV tuners
S3 chipsets (some) GeForce 2 MX200 (32MB)
GeForce 2 MX400 Elsa chipsets (some)"
"