Moving from KT133a to SiS 735:Your experiences please

[chriskjel]

I just ordred the ECS K7S5A from newegg to replace my ASUS a7v133. I would like to hear from others who have migrated from a Via KT133a to a SiS 735. I know there are many posts about these chipsets but I would like to know what to expect. My memory and hard drive benchmarks seemed a bit low on the Asus and I want to see if these will be better or worse with the ECS board. I don't want to get into the *Via roolz-Sis droolz* (or vice versa) thing, please just let me know of your experiences. I'll be using SDR133 memory at first so it would be nice to hear how the ECS board performs with it.

 

[Pabster]

I can speak directly from personal experience.

The second K7S5A I had the pleasure of using personally replaced an ABIT KT7A. I swapped in a Duron 750 and 512MB of PC133. It was not only a breath of fresh air to install my SB! Live without headaches, but I was also immediately dazzled by the IDE performance improvement.

In synthetic tests, KT133A and SiS 735 (with SDRAM) are very, very close -- within 1%, with 735 usually edging out KT133A. In real world performance, I found SiS 735 considerably speedier. That probably has a lot to do with the IDE performance, seeing as how the HD is the largest bottleneck in a machine.

 

[Tummy]

On my k7s5a, I couldn't use 2 pc-133 dimms unless my vio was > 3.3V. I solved this by using a powerwin 300W power supply that allowed me to adjust the 3.3v line using an internal pot. Without adjusting, default was about 3.2ish on 4 different power supplies i tried and it'd keep hanging/crashing. Once I used the powerwin w/> 3.3v, it worked like a charm and has been stable since. performance wise i find it about the same as my kt133a

 

[chriskjel]

Pabster-Yeah, I use the onboard Promise controller (non-raid) and it just seems a bit sluggish and stutters once and a while.Thanks.
Tummy-I have an Enhance 350 watt PSU that runs the 3.3v rail at 3.52 and the 5v at 4.97 on the Asus.
I plan on using 2 sticks of sdr so hopefully I'll be ok. Thanks.

 

[DieHardware]

I have a KT7A and a K7S5A, they've both been very stable(IMO switching from win9x to win2k/XP made the biggest improvement). The ECS performs better in benchmarks but I can't tell the difference in everyday use. The amazing thing to me is the ECS cost 60% less.

 

[DieHardware]

Pabster I have identical Maxtor D740X 40GB drives in both machines with XP on the Abit and win2k on the ECS, the former gets over 40MB/s and the latter over 38MB/s in the ATTO drive benchmark. The ECS does win all the Sandra memory tests though.

 

[Lord Gwynz]

Just ran Sisoft Sandra 2001 on my ECS K7S5A system, here's some benchmarks:

CPU: 4159 MIPS/2059 MFLOPS
MultiMedia: 8232 Int SSE/9446 FP SSE
RAM: 542/552
HD: 21844

It's currently configured with an AMD Athlon XP 1800+, an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon, 512 MB PC133 RAM and a WD 40 GB ATA/100 hd. Dual boots to W98SE/W2K and when it's not playing FPS or rally racing type games, it's crunching SETI. No stability issues whatsoever.

 

[NFS4]

I went from an Abit KT7A-RAID (which was working perfectly after I ditched the SB Live! for a Santa Cruz) to a Reference SiS735 board (MicroATX, 3 PCI slots) which had many BSOD's, reboots, and freezes and then to an ECS K7S5A which also had many BSOD's, reboots, and freezes.

I even went from a 300W Sparkle PS to a 350W Sparkle PS to try to alleviate the problems. Still, more BSOD's, reboots, and freezes. So I kept the same components, bit the bullet and bought another VIA based motherboard; this time the KT266A based Shuttle AK31 Rev 3.1. For about $25 more than the ECS (at that time), I thought it a good buy considering that it had 4 DDR DIMM slots vs 2, 6 PCI slots vs 5, 4 fan headers vs 2, and clock, voltage, DIMM voltage, etc. vs NONE it was clearly the better board. Considering that I am using 5 of my PCI slots with one set aside for a PCI 802.11b card, and am using 3 DIMM slots with another set aside when price come down, I would have been up a creek w/o a paddle with the ECS board anyway.

All in all, I'm happy my decisions.

 

[Beatles]

I went from the ECS K7S5A which was plagued with the same problems that NFS4 had to the EPoX BKHA+ and stability and performance was night and day.

 

[mschell]

Remember that the K7S5A is a very inexpensive (or cheap if you will) motherboard. Some bad apples can be expected for the $62.00 you pay for this board. A better alternative would be the LeadTek 7350KDA. Shuttle is releasing a SiS 735 board as well.
My Leadtek 7350KDA allows more performance from my factory unlocked AXIA than any other mainboard I've tried and is is very stable also.

 

[NFS4]

<< Remember that the K7S5A is a very inexpensive (or cheap if you will) motherboard. Some bad apples can be expected for the $62.00 you pay for this board. A better alternative would be the LeadTek 7350KDA. Shuttle is releasing a SiS 735 board as well.
My Leadtek 7350KDA allows more performance from my factory unlocked AXIA than any other mainboard I've tried and is is very stable also. >>


That's like saying that since you paid $8,000 for KIA Rio vs $10,000 for a Toyota Echo that you should expect for your Hyundai not to start up everyday. No, that ain't gonna cut it.

 

[chriskjel]

Thanks to all! I'm not into overclocking so that's not an issue. I looked at the Leadtek board but it didn't have SDR slots. Switching boards is an experiment. I've owned 3 Via boards and am tired of the all the 4in1's and patches. I know the SiS 735, and the K7S5A in particular aren't perfect. I've read the horror and success stories about the board. Sometimes you just want to try something different.

 

[mschell]

NFS4
My post was based on the fact that while many seemed to have problems with the ECS board, many have no problem whatsoever. This points to spotty quality control. The problems being reported in the forums are not caused by the chipset itself, the chipset was not the cause of your problems either.
The topic of this post is "Moving from KT133a to Sis 735" chipset
Keeping with price difference between the ECS board and other boards in it's performance class, a better automotive anology would be a Hugo vs the Toyota Echo.

 

[osage]

I had 2 Iwill KK266 boards, great boards IMO, but they have been displaced by K7S5A s.. they just perform better in all areas for me. Being able to use pc133 for a time before upgrading to ddr was iceing on the cake.

 

[Kostya]

I'm just curious to find out what CPU you will be using, since I have heard that the latter revision K7S5A boards do not support T-Birds, only Athlon XPs... As to if this is true, I'm not sure, but I do know that my K7S5A is currently collecting dust, possibly as result of this issue, and I would warn you to look into this more in depth you aren't going with an XP.

 

[Duvie]

< I'm just curious to find out what CPU you will be using, since I have heard that the latter revision K7S5A boards do not support T-Birds, only Athlon XPs... As to if this is true, I'm not sure, but I do know that my K7S5A is currently collecting dust, possibly as result of this issue, and I would warn you to look into this more in depth you aren't going with an XP. >

what revision are we talking about??? This is untrue..Even older mobos run the xp without a hitch...This is probably a spin-off of the rumors of ecs boards not working with 1.4 tbirds due to incorrect or out of spec ohm resistors on the board...I have and built 2 other boards with 1.4 tbirds and have no issues.


Keep in mind chriskjel,

While no one will argue ECS may lack a bit of top notch quality control the sis chipset is not the issue and is running error free...I have heard of radeon 7500 incompatabilities but nothing confirmed. Via's problems are confirmed and widely felt...Hence the new 4 in 1's every month. Maybe when the hit 4.50's they will have the ide perfromance for many running win2k as it should have been when they bought it.

Ocing aside (lack of it that is) This is my all time favorite board...hands down...I have owned or built kt133's,kt133a's, and a few kt266's...I have now built 5 sis735's (all the last boards I have done).

 

[DigitalLove]

Hi chriskjel,

I just made the switch from ASUSTEK A7V133 to LEADTEK 7350KDA. The sis735 board seemed snappier and stabler overall. Unlike the via kt133a board, on the sis735 board I did not experience any hiccups or stuttering while playing 3d games. IDE performance was much faster as well.

On the via kt133a board (with Live! card), I can still hear snap, crackle, & pop noises. But on the sis735 board I could not reproduce the problem. On the via kt133a board, I occasionally get random lockups in Win2K/XP. No such problems with the sis735 board.

So far the sis735 board is performing suprisingly well. It's been very reliable and does not have any of the little annoying quirks associated with the via kt133a board. Also, the sis735 board was very easy to setup -- no 4in1's or third-party fixes to worry about.

Anyway, good luck with your new board and hope you are happy with it.