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<< I still haven't figured out if the d*mn thing has busmastering turned on -- sure doesn't seem that way. The ecsusa site has nothing sugnificant on busmastering, except in the questions and complaints lodged by the buyers. >>
I think it's hilarious (well, not really) that people have issues like these and are willing to put up with never ending hassles doing ECS' QC work for them, all to save $30. I know of people who have spent weeks dorking around with this board and still can't get it to work correctly, I guess their time is worth nothing to them. Yes, it might be a "learning experience", but after about the 3rd solid day of pulling out your hair the only lesson you haven't learned is when to call a spade a spade and trashcan (or RMA for refund) the thing. >>
The ECS K7S5A was actually the easiest install I've ever done -- essentially, I just popped out the K7V, and popped in the K7S5A. After a few windows 98 cycles to install drivers, I was up and running with all my old software -- it couldn't have taken more than 2 hours, even with all my f*rting around. It could be that I have just gotten adept t this upgrade process, but...
Previously, I mainly bought quality-name boards (Asus and Intel), and then only after they had been out and beaten by the masses for a while. What follows is my take on the benefits of the more expensive boards.
I'm picky about the busmastering, because of my previous experience with Asus. I didn't get my K7V to behave properly until 15 months after I bought the thing (and two months before I replaced it with the K7S5A). Anyone who fell victim to the Asus/Via travan tape problem will empathize (strangely, most overclocking enthusiasts don't seem that concerned about backups, so it was hard to find anyone who even had a tape drive in a K7V system). The Asus site had nothing on the problem; only by doing web searches on keywords, did I finally find out what the problem was, and then the updated drivesr came from Via, not Asus. In short: the busmastering drivers for the Via chipset were buggy, so the tape drive rebooted the system randomly. In contrast, at least the tape drive *worked* when I connected it to the K7S5A. Remember that the K7V got absolutely glowing reviews when it was introduced, and the initial price was something like $160.
In addition, the ECC Ram feature of the K7V board -- though advertised in the manual, and on the web site -- simply did not work until a BIOS update about 4 months after the board came out. I had similar experiences with the CULS2; after the second BIOS update, the board constantly gave a "no video card" post code, if one had a card in the AGP slot. The solution (found by perusing the net) was to pull out the battery for 20 seconds -- this problem was not documented for some time, and left the user to wonder what horrors had befallen; the problem disappeared on subsequent BIOS updates. The CUSL2 was out of commission for 2 days, during a time when I was running calculations day and night.
In short, you can buy a 1st-tier board, and still be sucker-punched by time-consuming problems.