EliteGroup K7S5A Pro - motherboard - ATX - SiS735

When I was reading my diary, I found some notes about my struggle to build a new personal computer (PC). It took place in September 2001; by the time I was thinking that my previous PC (a classic Pentium with an Intel 233 MMX inside!) had been too hard to handle my increasing requirements on programming activities. I needed a faster performance to compile my source codes and a better display resolution to design interfaces of my applications.
...own is really difficult and rather complicated. There are a lot of aspects to consider. Everyone requires inexpensive components with nice qualities, so do I. First of all, to fulfill my main requirement – a speed with a rather low price – based on my observation, finally my feeling told me to purchase an AMD Athlon 1.33 MHz. Then I wrote down my plan to have an AMD 1.33 MHz. Just a note, my main reason to choose AMD, not INTEL because the price ... more

When I was reading my diary, I found some notes about my struggle to build a new personal computer (PC). It took place in September 2001; by the time I was thinking that my previous PC (a classic Pentium with an Intel 233 MMX inside!) had been too hard to handle my increasing requirements on programming activities. I needed a faster performance to compile my source codes and a better display resolution to design interfaces of my applications.

Well, to build a PC on our own is really difficult and rather complicated. There are a lot of aspects to consider. Everyone requires inexpensive components with nice qualities, so do I. First of all, to fulfill my main requirement – a speed with a rather low price – based on my observation, finally my feeling told me to purchase an AMD Athlon 1.33 MHz. Then I wrote down my plan to have an AMD 1.33 MHz. Just a note, my main reason to choose AMD, not INTEL because the price of an AMD must be under an INTEL for the same class and the same performance.

Then my time to think of a Socket-A motherboard came. I always realize that a processor (Central Processing Unit / CPU) can run well if the motherboard is good enough to support the features of the processor. It was really confusing for me to determine which motherboard could cooperate with the processor because there were numerous products available in markets.

How did I make a decision?

I know some PC vendors because the company where I work in always deals with them. Well, facing the situation, I asked for their recommendations. Alas! Most of them always recommended me some famous products, such as ASUS, ABIT, EPOX and GIGABYTE (Socket-A Motherboards).

Fortunately I still have these notes of their recommendations:

ASUS A7V266
AGP/PCI/ISA = 1/5 Slots
North Bridge = VIA KT266
South Bridge = VIA VT8233
Sound Onboard = Not Available
Price = USD 165

ABIT KG7
AGP/PCI = 1/6 Slots
North Bridge = AMD 761
South Bridge = VIA 686B
Sound Onboard = Not Available
Price = USD 135

EPOX EP-8KHA
AGP/PCI = 1/6 Slots
North Bridge = VIA KT266
South Bridge = VIA VT8233
Sound Onboard = AC97 Codec
Price = USD 131

GIGABYTE GA-7DX
AGP/PCI = 1/5 Slots
North Bridge = AMD 761
South Bridge = VIA 686B
Sound Onboard = Creative CT5880 4 CH
Price = USD 137

Each motherboard cost more than USD 120! It was very expensive for me. I earned Rupiahs and was going to spend US Dollars for a PC. I tried to find more products with lower prices, and fortunately I got only one:

ECS K7S5A
AGP/PCI = 1/5 Slots
North Bridge and South Bridge are combined to be 1 chipset (SIS735)
Sound Onboard = AC97 Codec
Price = USD 71

You know that finally ECS K7S5A. The price (USD 71) was not the main factor that changed my mind to choose ECS K7S5A. I was thinking and thinking about my needs. At my first glance, certainly I thought that ASUS was the best of all. But realizing that those motherboards were new products, the famous brands could not be hold as the only reference.

How did I solve my problem? The only way was to measure the performance of each motherboard. Certainly it was impossible to do it for all motherboards. Hence, I had to determine some motherboards to be benchmarked, namely ASUS A7V266, ABIT KG7 and ECS K7S5A.

I chose ASUS and ABIT because I thought that they had great reputations and certainly they were worth considering. Then ECS was a brand-new product with the lowest price made me like to see its performance. Overall I thought that the motherboards were representative enough to be samples of my benchmarking.

Then I contacted one of the vendors. We arranged our time to benchmark the motherboards. I told him that I was going to purchase a motherboard, an AMD Athlon 1.33 and other components required to build a PC from him after benchmarking. Certainly he agreed with me.

Benchmark

There are various tools or utilities to perform a benchmark. Based on my needs, I used SYSMark2000 (measuring the stability of a PC) and 3DMark2001 (measuring the ability of transferring graphical data to AGP) to prove the performances of the motherboards.

In brief, finally the benchmarking figured the following results:

Results of SYSMark2000
ASUS A7V266 = 196
ABIT KG7 = 198
ECS K7S5A = 198

Results of 3DMark2001
ASUS A7V266 = 3520
ABIT KG7 = 3515
ECS K7S5A = 3560

Though ECS K7S5A was the cheapest motherboard (perhaps in the world) for class, seeing the results above that it could prove its good performance – I had to choose it. Seeing is believing, isn’t it?

A little about the winner

If you are interested in building your own PC, I would like to recommend you to purchase ECS K7S5A. And please believe me that I recommend you to have this motherboard not only because of the benchmark- results, but also because of its great performance based on my experience that has fulfilled my dream of a speed and stability.

Nowadays it costs about GBP40. And enclosing some of the following key features of ECS K7S5A might be useful for you.

Supports AMD Duron and Athlon with 200/266 MHz Front-Side Bus.
Consists of two 168-pin DIMM Slots for SDRAM memory modules.
Consists of two 184-pin DIMM Slots for DDR memory modules.
Supports SDRAM up to 133 MHz, and DDR up to 266 MHz memory bus.
Maximum installed memory is 1GB.
Sound Onboard
Consists of one AMR Slot for a special audio / modem riser card.

For more information, feel free to visit www.ecs.com.tw.

Conclusion

A famous branded product is not the only one that fulfills our requirement. A product with the lowest price is also worth getting our consideration. Remember that we do not buy a brand, but quality.

This opinion is about a part required to build a PC. Some people might think that they prefer buying a built-up PC though it is rather expensive. It is okay. But, if buying a built-up PC is your alternative or your preference, in this chance I would tell you something; A built-up PC costs much more expensive than a PC that we build on our own because their management fee. And sometimes the vendor or seller of a built-up PC does not sell only a PC (hardware), but he also sells an operating system installed on the PC. Supposing you have got an operating system on your current PC (Windows 98 or Windows XP) and you are buying a new built-up PC, in this case you should make a negotiation with the seller whether you are allowed to buy the PC without buying installed the operating system. If you succeed in the negotiation, it means that you have avoided wasting your money because you can use your current operating system on your new PC.

But, based on my experiences, I would say that building a PC on our own saves a lot of our money. Instead of saving our money, we have more flexibility to modify our PC in accordance with our needs or wants. And a built-up PC is usually difficult to modify or upgrade.

I did not build this PC in a day. It took me about 2 weeks to accomplish my mature planning of building my dream PC. Today, as its result - I still feel that my current PC is a great one because it works as I wish.

Why am I writing about this opinion on ECS K7S5A?

You might say, "Djohan, you've got the motherboard for quite a long time. And now there must be a lot of better motherboards in markets as the manufacturers are competiting. Then, why is this motherboard still recommended for us?"

Hmm ... It is a nice comment. You are right! Well, I still recommend you to buy ECS K7S5A because I have tried on its performance on my own. It makes me sure that ECS K7S5A must be suitable for you, too. And personally, I think that having my ECS K7S5A with an AMD Athlon 1.33 could give me a pride because the technology is still supporting today's software.

However, instead of recommending this motherboard, I also want to let you know the best solution to make your own decision on purchasing a motherboard, that is to ask your vendor or seller to do the benchmark for you.

If you think it is difficult to have someone to do the benchmark, another option is to visit benchmarking sites, such as www.Tomshardware.com.

Behind the scenes

Before ending this opinion, I should say thanks to Karen, our Special Events Coordinator, who has helped me much to submit this opinion. Till now, without the links she has sent to me by email, I think I still cannot submit this opinion because the link for this category has not shown up.

Finally, I hope this opinion, especially my experience would be helpful for you. Thank you for reading.

 

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