Opinions on SIS Chipset motherboards?

[WyteWatt]

If you own a SIS chipset mobo which model and brand is it? Plus how do you like it and how is the stability please?

 

[OverVolt]

P4S533, SIS645DX It's seems stable to me, there not much for OC'ing though. At first i was having corrupted HD problems but i fixed it later since it was regonizing my WD IDE drive as a SCSI drive.

But a driver reinstall fixed that Hasn't crashed since.

 

[JediJeb]

ECS K7S5A, with 1Ghz Tbird. Have had it running since october 2001 pretty much nonstop. It was rock stable the whole time till a power surge fried it this week. Not an overclockers board but one to get for just plain use. I am getting the ECS L7S7A2 to replace it tomorrow, hope it works just as well.

 

[WyteWatt]

JediJeb, if you remember, please let me know how that goes. Thanks. If you forget thats ok.

 

[bgatot]

I just upgraded to a P4 1.6a and MSI 645 Ultra mobo (SIS 645). Seems to run just fine at 2.1gz, and even at 2.2gz.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

I have an Asus P4SDX using the SiS655 chipset. Runs fast and stable, no problems, it'd be a decent overclocker if it weren't for the lack of GP/PCI lock, but that's more of an Asus problem than an SiS one.

 

[Zukatah]

SiS645DX (Asus P4S533) and I love it. I've had no problems with it and it runs stable when overclocked. You can't go past 150mhz FSB but it's really cheap and packed with features so it's not that bad.... If I were to choose another motherboard in the same situation, I'd pick this one any day.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

P4S333, k7S5A, K7SEM, I've based builds on all 3 and all 3 were excellent price/performance,features values that have served me and those I've built them for well.

 

[Acanthus]

I have built 5 SiS 655 based systems around the MSI 655-FISR motherboard.

The performance is great, all the boards oc to 160fsb easy, with a Nbridge cooling mod they can push 175mhz+. All 5 are the non HT version of the board. My only complaint is there is a compatibility issue with all Geforce FX cards, there is said to be a BIOS fix coming.

 

[Boogak]

Had a ECS K7S5A (SiS735) and a Gigabyte 8SRX (SiS645) for about a year each before I upgraded to nForce2 platform. Both were stable as heck, cheap but good quality I thought. Not the best performing chipsets, but excellent bang for the buck.

 

[Arcanedeath]

ECS K7S5A (Sis 735), I've had or installed 7 of them, I had issues w/ 2 losing the cmos on occasion (solved by replaceing the cmos battery on one and hooking the other up to a UPS got rid of it's issues), but otherwise, very stable and extremly good price performace for the time I got em + 2 of them are using some of my old SDR memory so it saved that stuff from the junk heap. Not really an overclockers board, but they make great office machines and all 7 of them are still in service today, and the first one was purchased back in 2001. I did have 1 of these DOA, and had to RMA it, but it's replacment has worked fine for just under 2 years so far. I'm very fond of this board, although at this point its a bit of a dated soln. Although I hear good things about Sis 746FX chipsets. Hope this helps....

 

[dexvx]

MSI Ultra 745 (SiS 745 for AMD)
Asus CUSI (SiS 630 for Intel)

They were acceptably stable. The CUSI I didnt have for a long time. The 745 one, I've had for over a year running Gentoo. Sometimes it randomly blue screens, but its only been a couple times in the last year.

 

[Confused]

Cheap, pretty stable, do the job, no frills


That's my take on them Well, at least the modern chipsets i've seen/used


Confused

 

[Confused]

Cheap, pretty stable, do the job, no frills


That's my take on them Well, at least the modern chipsets i've seen/used


Confused

 

[galt]

Have had a k7s5a pro (sis 735) for 3 months. Absolutely unbelievable price/performance ratio. I remember buying my athlon 850mhz for 130$ and my asus a7v133 for 155$ two years ago. That was a rock stable system. I got my sis mobo and an athlon xp 1800 for 80$, and its just as stable. I dont think i'll ever pay more than 100 for a mobo again.

 

[woodie1]

I built a system around an Asrock K7S8x -SIS 746FX, SIS 963L- about three weeks ago. It started up on the first boot and has been rock solid since. Don't plan on overclocking and with an XP 2100+ runs XP Pro just fine TYVM.

 

[JediJeb]

I just installed the L7S7A2 mobo over my lunch break, took only a couple of reboots and everything worked great. Win2K automatically found and loaded all drivers from the included CD without a hitch. I will keep an eye on it and repost again tonight after it has run a few hours. My girlfriend will be using it this afternoon and believe me if there is anything wrong I will hear about it

hehe.

 

[WyteWatt]

JediJeb thanks.

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: imtim83
If you own a SIS chipset mobo which model and brand is it? Plus how do you like it and how is the stability please?

I got an ECS P4S5ADX+ board, SIS 645DX. What can I say? The board didn't work right at first when I inserted V-Data DDR stick, changed that for Kingmax and now it works super smooth. A couple of years back, when I had a Duron and a VIA KT133 chipset, it was often giving me troubles of instability and I was always worried about the chipset (he-he), once it corrupted the boot record of the HD when Speedisk was running and screwed up my entire Windows ME installation when I overloaded that crap with accidentally simultaneously running another app at the same time.

Now that I got a SIS chipset board, I remembered that my puter even has a chipset only now after several months that I saw this thread. It installed without a single driver, it works so well you never notice it even exists. Drivers? Bah. Chipset instability? Bah. What is it? I think they're second (?) maybe to only Intel ones.

 

[Brian48]

Two ECS K7S5A's (SiS735) and one Asus A7S333 (SiS745). No problems with either.

 

[TronX]

Nothing but problems with SIS.. I'd pay more for a Intel 865 or 875.
The problems I've had are with the Abit SD7-533 and IRQ problems
with Audigy soundcards.. I fixed that using random IRQ's in the Bios.
The Abit SD7-533 has been the worst board I've ever used.. I can
sum it all up in 1 word, "Crap."

 

[Peter007]

It appear the SIS Chipset is only Reliable on the ECS K7S5A Athlon Platform,
but not so stable under the P4 Platform right?

 

[vike105]

what's the fastest cpu that these p4S533 take?

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

It appear the SIS Chipset is only Reliable on the ECS K7S5A Athlon Platform,
but not so stable under the P4 Platform right?

No, the P4 SiS solutions out there are just fine and are usually on par with Intel, or very close. The good thing is that SiS is commonly cheaper than the competition. It's quite stable.. if you wanna talk about a board riddled with problems, you named it. When the K7S5A came out originally, it was flaky. It took a few revisions to get it in the shape its in today.

 

[Cerb]

K7S5A (SiS 735) rev 1: not many, one dead after almost two years, repalced w/ L7S7A2.
K7S5A (SiS 735) rev 3: several, all fine.
K7S5A (SiS 735) Pro: several, all fine.
L7S7A2 (SiS 746): Two fine, one recently RMA'd, board recieved from RMA is fine.
Total of 32 ECS SiS boards used now (30 from Newegg), and while I eventually lost track of the specific K7S5As, there have now been...
1 death, after over 23 months of use in a very hot, closed, dusty space.
4 batteries that needed replacing.
1 bad board.

As long as you spend the extra few bucks for some decent RAM (Kingston ValueRAM or basic Crucial, FI) and a decent PSU ($30-$35 300w Forton, Enlight, Enhance, etc.), there will be almost no problems (after 30 boards, you find some problems. Period. No matter what board it is).

You get better as you pay more, like some of the NForce2 boards (I love the 8RDA+), but if you're on a tight budget, I'd recommend ECS SiS boards.