From AnandTech:
"For the most part, the three major DDR chipsets perform within a few percentage points of each other. You can?t really go wrong with any of them. But obviously that?s not the answer you?re looking for. There are a few cases, especially in very stressful circumstances, that the SiS 735 truly flexes its muscle.
We are still investigating exactly what SiS did to give the 735 such dominating performance, but it?s definitely very low-level architectural enhancements that make the 735 the solution it is today.
The real beauty of the 735 isn?t its performance, especially since you?ll find it quite difficult to notice a performance difference (in most cases) between it and the 760/KT266. No, the real beauty of the 735 is its price. The ECS board we used in this review retails for less than $80. We have seen it places for as low as $65 plus shipping. This makes the board and the platform the perfect companion for the very low cost Duron and Athlon processors. For less than $200 you can easily upgrade your system to a Duron on a SiS 735 board with DDR SDRAM courtesy of the very aggressive pricing from AMD, SiS and DDR SDRAM manufacturers such as Crucial."
From X-Bit Labs:
"We have made sure that thanks to SiS 735 core logic, ECS K7S5A mainboard is a high-performance product offered at a low price. "
From AmdMB:
"With the price tag it has, ECS target the low-budget market, even if they didn?t intend to. The high performance market will love the speed and power the SiS 735 chipset is delivering here. The ECS K7S5A is truly an awesome motherboard! The only thing preventing it from receiving an Editor?s Choice are the elusive front-side bus adjustments. But, perhaps if we ask nicely enough, ECS can give us what we are asking for in another bios update! This board deserves the score of 9 stars out of 10! "
From FiringSquad:
"ECS's K7S5A offers everything you'd want in a workhorse machine: strong performance, a well-rounded feature set, and rock-solid stability. On top of all this, it comes at an outrageously low price! If ECS just would've added a more flexible bus speed selection with 1MHz bus increments, we'd have a solid Editor's Choice contender right here."
From OCWorkbench:
"Overall, it ECS K7S5A will appeal to those who needs a low cost DDR high performance mainboard." (given an Editors Choice Award)
From TweakTown:
Well, for our first SiS 735 board we have to say it rocks. Despite the lack of overclocking on the motherboard, the results blew the roof off the AMD 760 and the KT266. As for the board itself, it is an extremly stable, well designed OEM motherboard and offers very little to complain about (only the overclocking but let us specify its OEM not OC).
The SiS Chipset alone gets a 9 out of 10 rating, but overall: Rating - 8/10
From HardwareAnalysis:
The K7S5A is certainly not for the extremists or power users in our community. However, for someone perhaps just getting a start on a DIY system, and looking for a reasonable board, the K7S5A?s affordable price, competitive performance, and wide availability make it a compelling option. Less than $70 for a DDR board (a top performing DDR board, at that) in some places is a pretty reasonable offer.
But then, of course, Rollo said it was just junk so all these people must fall into his "poor people and people that don't know anything about computer hardware" category.
Right, Rollo.
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