ECS Great Build Quality LOL

[Lexeus]

Was just looking at the ECS website and the picture they have of the K7AMA is great . It demonstrates their build quality so well. The North bridge heatsink isn't on striaght lol , and this is their own site . Look:
http://www.ecsusa.com/products/k7ama.html
See ? Its twisted to the right
Just made me laugh, knowing all the probs I had with a K7S5A board of theirs I bought. Never again

[SilentDeath]

k7s5a's rule tbh.

they make very decent boards for the price, and it doesnt matter if the nb heatsink isnt on straight.. it will still cool it fine.. im looking to find a mobo to upgrade my dads pc with and will definatly take a k7s5a if i can find one in my price range, i would take a SIS chipset over any via chipset.

what probs did you have with k7s5a? i had none...

[Howard]

SilentDeath, I might have my K7S5A for sale in a few weeks when I get my NF7-S.
The only problems apart from the obvious performance disadvantage and features compared to newer boards, was that the CMOS keeps loosing it's settings. But that's probably due to the unofficial bios anyway...

[Austin]

I think it does illustrate poor attention to detail. Anyway SiS chipsets are certainly known to be less quirky than VIA chipsets but offer virtually no o/c'ing nor tweaking options, the exact oposite of VIA (which is where a lot of problems with VIA stem from). However popular opinion is that VIA tend to address what problems they do have whereas SiS generally just don't bother at all.

Specifically about ECS, they are down there with the likes of PC Chips (I think they were rumoured to be part of the same co) ... that's cheapness over all else but from what I hear they are gaining a lot of fans over the last 12 months. From what I hear you either get perfection or a long list of headaches. Go on, get an nForce2 (< £40 at Dabs).

[Howard]

nForce2 is by far the best thing nVidia have come up with tbh

[SilentDeath]

i would say nforce2 is the best thing to happen to pcs in the last 2 years, but my 9700 is better

i just need a pc for my dad.. the mobo on his k6-2 machine seems to be dieing, or the cause for all the probs - its stange, the psu and ram are fine, and its compleatly stable most of the time (tested with voltmeter, metest86, and prime95 thoughly) but it gets blue screens and crashes a lot randomly... not suprising as its a win98se machine, but we need that for the scanner probly some other stuff... Austin any ideas for the cause before i consider howards k7s5a? (youll have to flash it back first though!)

howard pm me when you want to sell it

[Agent]

SiS chipsets are really stable, but as Austin has said, offer virtualy no tweeking options.
These things can be a god send when building PCs for people that like to mess without knowing what they are doing

[Austin]

|SilentDeath| you could take out all none essential parts, ensure everything is stock and do a fresh OS install if you want to be sure the mobo is quirky. Playing around with the BIOS settings may also help but you could save some time and just upgrade

[SilentDeath]

tryed everything exept upgrading. i really think the mobo is causing it, its j-mark 530bf (sis chipset btw ). on boot it doesnt say theres any l2 cache, the moo says it should have i htink 512k, but i cant remeber, might have just been 256k, but it reports none :/
i will check tomorrow to see what drivers its got atm cos they might be the cause

[Austin]

Should be an option in the BIOS to enable/disable L2 cache. Actually didn't Skt7 have L2 on the mobo itself, 256k - 1MB with 512k being the norm? IIRC they did as the K6-III doubled the memory bandwidth by introducing its own on-die L2 cache making the mobo's L2 become a L3 cache (look out P4 EE). Some cheap-a$$ Skt7 mobos were made which lacked L2 (some even used plastic chips on the mobo to make it look as though it had it). If you lack L2 perf will really suck and a K6-III would give a huge boost to you. Anyway check the BIOS.

[SilentDeath]

mobo:
http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/produ...30bf/530bf.htm
notice hte crappy design, could there be a worse place for floppy connector (right at the back!) which is made worse by the rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishty case i have for it (as the psu rests above the ram)

it says theres 512k in teh manual, and i think it always used to report it..... i think i b0rked it with 124fsb :/
i have a spare mobo from a p166, but that would probly be worse... max fsb being 83...

i tryed the comp wihtout any cache atall, it took aobut an hour to load win98 (as opposed to 30 seconds!), it makes a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE difference. l2 makes no difference, so it must be b0rked. i tryed having l1 on l2 off, still randomly crashes :/

wouldnt any l2 cache be on the north bridge? not on seperate chips on mobo..?