With a bios update it will support all current athlon xp processors (current fastest is the 2700+)
- Dec 27, 2001
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Proud owner of a K7S5A for a year now.It's been one of the easiest/stablest/troublefree computers I've ever built. Lost CMOS once in that time but otherwise no major glitchers.
Very interested in further mother developments and saw this on the newegg site:
"Retail Box (see pics for details) Back Plate Included"
BUT
The pic's still don't show a back plate...............
I have a non pro version.. I havent had any problems with it... flawless since the second I installed it.
I bought a K7S5A at a Outpost combo for a friend because it was cheap. I deeply regret that decision, and just got him a nforce2 board.
There is a bad problem with the bios resetting once a week or so. It locked up while my friend was rolling back to a earlier restore point, XP is completly hosed. (I'm switching the motherboards and reinstalling everything Saturday.)
I also got the board to use his old memory, this was the worst problem. Constant lockups with Kingston 512 PC133 sticks. His IL-2 Sturmvock and Norton Antivirus scans consitantly locked up the machine every time it was run in this config. This made him switch to DDR, allowing him escape from the damn nightmare.
The ECS supporters will complain that bios resets happen with a cheap powersupply. And the board is just finicky about memory. But being increadibly sensitive to PS/mem issues is a motherboard problem, IMHO. The entire point of the excercise was to use SDRAM, and it this instance, it failed miserably.
There is a bad problem with the bios resetting once a week or so. It locked up while my friend was rolling back to a earlier restore point, XP is completly hosed. (I'm switching the motherboards and reinstalling everything Saturday.)
I also got the board to use his old memory, this was the worst problem. Constant lockups with Kingston 512 PC133 sticks. His IL-2 Sturmvock and Norton Antivirus scans consitantly locked up the machine every time it was run in this config. This made him switch to DDR, allowing him escape from the damn nightmare.
The ECS supporters will complain that bios resets happen with a cheap powersupply. And the board is just finicky about memory. But being increadibly sensitive to PS/mem issues is a motherboard problem, IMHO. The entire point of the excercise was to use SDRAM, and it this instance, it failed miserably.
- Dec 27, 2001
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Mine had the BIOS randomly reset. This was narrowed down to a cheap battery which can easily be swapped out. I never bothered and eventually the resets stopped happening. I'm assuming they fixed stupid design decisions like that for the Pro version.
Here are some of my thoughts on the original K7S5A, mostly a cut and paste from an earlier post:
About a year ago, I built my first PC with a K7S5A + 950 MHz Duron combo that I bought from Fry's ($80 for the combo). It has worked great from the start but some people have run into problems (Lost CMOS, Data Corruption, Cold Start Problems, etc.)
I'm using pretty generic PNY PC133 SDRAM in my set-up so, at least in my case, top quality memory was not required.
Some people suspect that many, if not all, K7S5A problems can be traced to inexperienced builders. But there have been *very* experienced builders using top notch components that have *still* run into problems with this board. I base this perception on reading tons of posts in several K7S5A forums for over a year (amdmb.com ECS forum, Mr. Athlon's K7S5A forum and the OCWorkbench.com ECS forum.)
For some, problems can not be corrected through the use, say, of a high quality power supply. While a quality power supply is always a good idea, I feel that this has been oversold as a cause of multiple K7S5A related ills, especially on the OCWorkbench.com ECS forum. (FWIW, I did use a decent Enlight 340 Watt power supply in my PC. It works fine.)
I personally suspect that not all K7S5A motherboards are the same and some work better than others. In other words, there may be quality control problems. Whether or not the percentage of K7S5As experiencing problems is any different that other motherboards is difficult to say. Again, my board works great.
Because there may be board to board variations, I wouldn't recommend buying a K7S5A through an online vendor if you find it locally for a reasonable cost. That's one reason that I bought my K7S5A from Fry's instead of from Newegg.com or mwave.com. I had read enough problem reports that I didn't want to risk the time and hassle of a mail order return and exchange. (If an online purchase is your best option, I don't think you could go wrong with either Newegg or mwave.)
If you do buy from a Fry's, here's a tip for selecting a motherboard. Look for a sealed box without the "Fry's returned item" sticker on it. Sure, most of these are probably fine but why take a chance?
The Burbank California Fry's has a tendency to place the stickered boxes within easy reach while the brand new boxes can be harder to find.
Here are some of the more helpful links for the K7S5A:
Mr. Athlon K7S5A Problem Fix Guide
Mr. Athlon K7S5A Forums
amdmb.com ECS Forum
Bob
About a year ago, I built my first PC with a K7S5A + 950 MHz Duron combo that I bought from Fry's ($80 for the combo). It has worked great from the start but some people have run into problems (Lost CMOS, Data Corruption, Cold Start Problems, etc.)
I'm using pretty generic PNY PC133 SDRAM in my set-up so, at least in my case, top quality memory was not required.
Some people suspect that many, if not all, K7S5A problems can be traced to inexperienced builders. But there have been *very* experienced builders using top notch components that have *still* run into problems with this board. I base this perception on reading tons of posts in several K7S5A forums for over a year (amdmb.com ECS forum, Mr. Athlon's K7S5A forum and the OCWorkbench.com ECS forum.)
For some, problems can not be corrected through the use, say, of a high quality power supply. While a quality power supply is always a good idea, I feel that this has been oversold as a cause of multiple K7S5A related ills, especially on the OCWorkbench.com ECS forum. (FWIW, I did use a decent Enlight 340 Watt power supply in my PC. It works fine.)
I personally suspect that not all K7S5A motherboards are the same and some work better than others. In other words, there may be quality control problems. Whether or not the percentage of K7S5As experiencing problems is any different that other motherboards is difficult to say. Again, my board works great.
Because there may be board to board variations, I wouldn't recommend buying a K7S5A through an online vendor if you find it locally for a reasonable cost. That's one reason that I bought my K7S5A from Fry's instead of from Newegg.com or mwave.com. I had read enough problem reports that I didn't want to risk the time and hassle of a mail order return and exchange. (If an online purchase is your best option, I don't think you could go wrong with either Newegg or mwave.)
If you do buy from a Fry's, here's a tip for selecting a motherboard. Look for a sealed box without the "Fry's returned item" sticker on it. Sure, most of these are probably fine but why take a chance?
The Burbank California Fry's has a tendency to place the stickered boxes within easy reach while the brand new boxes can be harder to find.
Here are some of the more helpful links for the K7S5A:
Mr. Athlon K7S5A Problem Fix Guide
Mr. Athlon K7S5A Forums
amdmb.com ECS Forum
Bob
I have this board and bought an Antec case from CompUSA for it. The default backplate that came with the case fit this board perfectly.
- Dec 27, 2001
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Originally posted by: Evadman
but newegg's description says the backplate is included
Yeah, I updated the first post a few hours ago to reflect that. It originally said it wasn't included, but I'm betting that was just some lazy copy and paste job from the old K7S5A description.
I left the original content of the first post to provide context for the first half of the comments where there was some discussion about backplates.
why was this posted, it's a board almost everyone is familiar with for a crappy price. hot? i think not
seems as though hot deals is now for those who are too lazy to go search for prices, come here because people list prices even if they're bad
i bought this board for $55 from Newegg.com before Christmas
seems as though hot deals is now for those who are too lazy to go search for prices, come here because people list prices even if they're bad
i bought this board for $55 from Newegg.com before Christmas
I was looking at the pics of the board on newegg and noticed something disturbing. If you look in the bottom-right corner of the board, there's a chip on it that says "VIA". I really hope that's not what I see, considering I bought many K7S5As for the purpose of avoiding anything VIA. :disgust:
- Dec 27, 2001
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A pretty pathetic attempt at thread crapping since you've managed only to prove how crappy your literacy skills are. This is not the K7S5A that you got before Christmas and thousands others got a year or more ago...it is the K7S5A Pro. This is a brand new board that, as far as I could tell, came out no longer than a few days ago if not yesterday. Besides being newly designed and manufactured it includes new features like USB 2.0.
While I have two non-pro versions of this board that are working fine now for several months, I'd still have to say (especially after building my last machine with a NV7M) that putting K7S5A and Pro together in the same sentence to be a bit oxymoronic.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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I bought one of those from the OfficeMax deal. It seems to actually work, which surprised me, but it really does sag the performance of the machine. I have in it a K6-2 machine, and after clocking it up from 366Mhz to 400Mhz (66Mhz FSB), it still takes a noticable percentage of CPU time. Combined with the new firewall (Kerio Personal Fireware) and web filter (WebWasher Classic 3.3), and with the overhead of Mozilla, the machine isn't so fast anymore. Sometimes, I can actually watch as the characters I've typed into the URL bar, slowly type themselves one-by-one into the text box. Not good.
The box lists the minimum system as a PII-266, whereas the web site claims a Pentium-MMX 233Mhz. I actually bought a second one, intended to run in a Pentium-100 system. I returned it, no way it's going to work in there. (Yes, it could have been free after rebate, but I didn't want to take the gamble and have to wait for my money.) Ironically, an older ISA v.90 USR Winmodem, works fine in a 486, the only noticable downside was a higher ping for online games. (That modem had a built-in DSP for line-modulation, so it was an HCF, not HSP, modem.)
On the other hand, the v.92 Modem-on-Hold works with my ISP (Juno), amazingly enough. Sad that I had to ditch my USR Courier v.Everything external for this cheap POS PCI "modem" to get this feature. because of the lack of continued support from USR.
Just a FYI..
Why would you avoid VIA boards?
The KT266A chipset is faster and more reliable than the SiS735.
My AK32A has NEVER lost CMOS settings. Hell, it's never even crashed in XP. It's not picky about power supplies at all, and neither were the countless other motherboards I've ever used or installed since I started building systems 10-years ago. The K7S5A should NOT be picky about power supplies. That fact that it's picky indicates poor design, quality control, and an overall piss poor product.
Luckily I didn't have the 133FSB problem with 2 256MB sticks of Kingston ValueRAM. If I had, I probably would have smashed it with a hammer. I'm surprised at how much patience people have to try such solutions as soldering resistors and such to fix some of this board's problems. I Ebay'd mine and was glad to be rid of it.
I use the honey x bios on mine, does anyone know can you use the alternat bios updates on this also. Just curios if it has changed or changed that much because of the USB 2.0 update.
I found the VIA chipset to flat out suck. I set up a couple boards with them, noticed poor/flaky performance, and took them out. I decided to try a K7S5A instead. No problem on a XP1800; no "three-in-one" crappy drivers (or whatever they were called) to install in XP. I've now set up six K7S5As and had only 1 bad one that Newegg RMA-ed with no problems. Also, I've never had a power supply issue, RAM issue, or cold boot issue. Only one bad ATA100 HD connector.
I only wish ECS had added the 333fsb to the new board for those new Bartons.
With VIA you have to deal with PCI latency problems, 4-in-1 drivers, and SB compatibility issues...
I haven't had any PCI problems, 4-in-1 drivers, 3-in-1 drivers, nor SB compatibility issues with the KT266A.
The majority of Athlon motherboards have VIA chipsets and none of them are as flaky and finicky as the K7S5A.
I knew when I got on the K7S5A forum and found out everyone was having the same problem as me that the board was crap.
There's even some nutjob out there that soldered tons of jumpers and dip switches to his K7S5A to get adjustable Vcore and multiplier. Geez, what a waste of time and money when the AK32A can do this in BIOS right out of the box.
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