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Would getting a ECS K7S5A SiS® 735 be an upgrade or a straight across?

Z

Zarick

Senior member
I have an asus a7v133. Was thinking about putting an xp2000 into it. Saw an add for frys where I could get an ECS K7S5A SiS® 735 with the xp 2000 for 129. The downside is that I have 768 of pc133 so I would only be able to use 512 of it. Would this be a good or bad move?
 
I saw that on sale at Fry's also - it is a good deal. If I remember right the A7V133 uses the KT133A. If this is the case then it will be faster then the ECS mobo. If it uses only the KT133 then it would probably be about the same. My suggestion would be to buy that setup and some PNY PC2100 at Best Buy (it is also on sale) and use the ECS as a cheap DDR platform. The SIS chip will not perform at a tremendous level but it still would be better than PC133. Then you could sell your ram and current mobo and processor on eBay or to a friend and hopefully recover most of the money that you just spent.
 
If I remember right the A7V133 uses the KT133A. If this is the case then it will be faster then the ECS mobo.
Click to expand...

I disagree. The sis735 is close to the KT266a in terms of performance.

Zarick, go the combo route and use your 512MB of PC133 for now, and transition to DDR later. I doubt you will miss the extra 256MB. 🙂
 
K7S5A with DDR266 is close to KT266a performance. With PC133, it loses any performance advantages. Possibly a slightly better memory controller than the KT133A, but not significant. You won't lose any performance by getting the board now and using PC133 with the much faster problem, and then you can upgrade to DDR later, but your only gain for now would be the faster processor.

The KT133 doesn't support a 133MHz bus technically, so if the A7V133 uses that and not the A version, then he wouldn't be able to use an XP2000+.

I use an early K7S5A, and it hasn't been a "bad" board, but it hasn't been perfect. I seem to have problems with floppies being corrupted, despite the issue of corrupted floppies under Win2k/XP having been corrected with a new BIOS. There were also issues with voltages, but I think that's fixed in new versions of the board. ECS just generally seemed to have issues with consistency. Lot of bad boards, lot of perfectly good boards.

You might want to verify exactly which board you're getting. ECS has different versions listed on their site, all K7S5A, but not the same manuals or BIOS. I'm not sure what the differences are.

The forums here have a dedicated ECS forum (they have archived the pre-2002 posts to a separate forum, which may have the majority of the K7S5A threads, so you may want to look at both). You can read up on this board if you want to be sure it's the one you want.
 
I assume that this is in US dollars, since there's no way they're selling an XP2000+ for only 119 canadian. You can get a retail boxed XP2000+ for 105 dollars US from newegg, with free shipping. Or 90 dollars OEM if you plan to use a different cooler on it.

It might be more for the individual part than it would be in a "combo", but you'll end up with about the same performance as you'd get using the K7S5A with SDR memory, save 25 to 40 dollars right now, and later when you can buy DDR you can get either the same board, or another board that might give you better performance and features for only slightly more money. Granted, if you EXPECT to get this exact same board later on, then it can't hurt to buy it now to save the money.

Depends on whether you expect that you'll want to be going for more performance later, or if you're going to be on a budget for a long time. If you expect that you'll want to get a faster board anytime soon (and won't have any use for the K7S5A after that), then don't blow the money on the board right now. If you expect that upgrading to DDR will be the only major thing you change within the next 6 months to a year, then it can't hurt to get the board now for a lower total price.

You really won't notice a difference with the lower memory count, unless you do stuff like video editing and graphics a lot of course. Just remember that the ECS board has zero overclocking capabilities other than changing the front-side bus in huge jumps (unless you use a modified "overclockers" bios which gives you a very few options). That may not matter to you of course.
 
Zarick,

The speed increase of the K7S5A over the A7V133 (A or not) will be quite noticeable, ......... and your getting the mb/cpu dirt cheap.
Go for it!

 
I don't think "noticeable" is a given when comparing the K7S5A to the KT133A with SDR. It looks like from the few reviews I can find that bothered to use SDR for testing, it is noticeable in benchmarks, but who "notices" a different between 175 frames per second and 190fps? I still say it depends on future plans.
 
The memory bandwidth of the ECS K7S5A motherboard i with SDR is not much better than your KT133A motherboard. However with DDR memory, the K7S5A is equal to the KT266A series of motherboard.

Your best bet is to probably try to unload your current motherboard/memory setup to allow u to upgrade to DDR. Then spend the $$$ on a new memory/mobo/cpu combo.


 
Be careful about Athlon-XP support on the A7V133 and remember, the KT133 chipset runs the south bridge on the main PCI bus (where all the slots are too), so you must consider the bandwidth limitations, performance isn't as good as with more modern chipsets.

The SiS 735 chipset (used on the K7S5A) integrates the north and southbridge, so you have much more bandwidth available. thus greater performance potential, from a more modern chipset.

IMO ...... why not grab the Fry's combo deal now, and just convert to DDR later (as your budget allows), ......... and perhaps sell or swap out the A7V133 with the one extra SDR stick ...........?
 
The SiS735 (with DDR populated, not the SDRAM) is slightly faster than VIA's KT266 chipset and slower than the KT266A.
 
Check your power supply before you get the new board, its very picky and will give you problems if you have some generic PS. Check the MB forums, there is plenty to read 🙂 I have this board with an Enlight Case and Enlight 300PS and its been fine for over a year, no problems. I have a Athlon 1Ghz, 256K DDR Crucial, SB Live Value 5.1, Onboard Lan, 40g IBM HD, GF2 GTS, 12x DVD Drive, and my board is version 1.0, one of the very first ones out....nothing is overclocked and I get 3845 in 3Dmark scores. I am building a new system now too since this one is about a year old and is showing its wrinkles 🙂 GL
 
ECS K7S5A is literally 10X better than any damn KT133A chipset board - AND cheaper.

UGH KT133A - horrible horrible chipset.
 
Originally posted by: AbRASiON
ECS K7S5A is literally 10X better than any damn KT133A chipset board - AND cheaper.

UGH KT133A - horrible horrible chipset.
Click to expand...

I love my MSI K7T-Turbo (KT133A)- it has been ultra stable and solid. Quite speedy for everything I need it to do as well (1.2GHz Athlon, 512MB, Win2K). Just because you had bad experiences with it doesn't mean it's horrible. I have heard of very few instances where people WERE dissing it- you're one of them. For 90%+ of the people I talk to, they loved the KT133A (on the right board- re: MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte). Some still happily run such a rig like myself, others only left it to upgrade to something faster with DDR. I would rather build myself another MSI KT133A system than put any ECS board in my computer any day of the week- I don't care what it can do.
 
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