SIS 746 vs the competition?

[slackerinabox]

Hey,
I'm looking to replace my crash happy kt266a board with an ECS L7S7A2 board that's based on the sis 746 chipset.. How does this board stack up against the competition? I'm looking for the best price/stability ratio (speed is important but not the main factor).. I'm sure that Nforce 2 is more robust in many ways but is the sis746 worth looking into? I've had so many VIA horror storries but is their newer chipsets worth looking into? I currently have an Athlon XP 1500+ with DDR266 but will probably upgrade the memory to something faster in the future.. Thanks guys

 

[Peter]

First of all you should assert where the crashes come from. It's quite rare that it's the mainboard. Faulty RAM (www.memtest86.com), cooling issues and poor power supply are MUCH more common.

 

[slackerinabox]

Hey,
I've swapped the memory, power supply, hard drives, and even the case and I still get these annoying freezes/crashes every so often... The only thing that hasn't been swapped is the motherboard and cpu

 

[DAPUNISHER]

this board is a nice deal, it has a 5$ gift certificate that brings the price down to $79.95.

 

[RedRonin]

OCWorkbench: ECS L7S7A2 SiS 746 Mainboard Review

OCWorkbench: ECS K7S7AG SiS 746 + Xabre200 Review

Each of these are interesting motherboards. I may have to look into the L7S7A2 in a few months myself, though I expect to build a PC on the K7S5A Pro before that. The K7S7AG though worries me. I find the lack of an AGP slot and a board this size being limited to a mere 3 PCI slots rather inconsistent. Sure, it's nice that the onboard graphics comes with its own built-in 64 MB of memory, but that doesn't seem to speed performance all that much. If I'm only going to have three PCI slots, I'd might as well have an AGP slot and go with any number of Micro-ATX motherboards instead. Nice try ECS, but take a look at the Biostar M7NCG or even the ASUS A7N266-VM for a clue to how your All-In-One motherboard should look next time.

HUN-YA!

Red Ronin

 

[slackerinabox]

I think I'm going to bite the bullet and go with the L7S7A2... I only have ddr266 ram right now anyways and it'll be a while before I can afford to upgrade, so the nforce2 seems like a luxury right now.. Thanks guys!

 

[Peter]

Yeah. You tell ECS/PC-Chips how to build all-in-ones. Hello? Guess which company invented the concept ...

Anyway, the AG series boards aim at a different market, that's why the separate graphics chip with dedicated memory. Why no AGP slot? Because the AGP connection is already occupied by said graphics chip. And with the amount of onboard I/O you'll hardly need even the three PCI slots - if you bought the board for something that makes sense for this design. If you didn't, then your fault, not ECS's.

We've had these onboard 3D graphics (rather than chipset-integrated shared-memory graphics) mainboards for a loooong time now. This concept first appeared in 1998, guess which company.

 

[RedRonin]

Whoa, Pete! I didn't mean to offend or anything... I was just stating my own preference for an All-In-One motherboard solution that is not also a "Closed Loop" when it comes to future graphics upgrades. Sure, there will likely be PCI versions of most graphics cards for some time, but I have noticed they are often still priced in the $70-100 range even when their AGP counterpart is available for under $40. The L7S7AG would certainly be a GREAT solution for many people, as long as they are in the target audience, as you stated. I just don't happen to be in that bullseye range. I do think the Game Union motherboard could have included all its current features and still fit within a Micro-ATX format.

HUN-YA!

Red Ronin

 

[txxxx]

From my personal experience with an ECS K7S5A, Sis735 with DDR memory, Id say that your next board would most likely fine. My Sis735 has been flawless, stability wise, and compatibility wise.

And as for the switiching, I dont think its worth switching over for performance gains, unless you have stability issues. They wont be as visible as you think.