Introduction

ECS K7S5A

K7S5A: First SiS 735 board to market!

It's been three months since SiS set the chipset market on fire with the release of its 735 chipset. When we first took a look at the chipset we were very impressed with its performance and feature set -- 735 literally came out of nowhere with performance that was essentially equal, if not better than AMD's 760 chipset, and a feature list that rivaled VIA's KT266 and ALi's MAGIK 1 DDR chipsets.

At that time MAGiK 1 was offering disappointing performance (despite being first to market), a stigma that it never recovered from. Along similar lines, VIA's KT266 chipset got off to a slower start than everyone expected. First of all, motherboards were only available from a handful of manufacturers. This was in direct contrast to its KT133 series of chipsets; practically every motherboard manufacturer had at least one product based on one of the many variations of KT133 and its integrated descendants. In addition, performance varied wildly from board to board, and in some cases different revisions of motherboards based on the same product.

Sockets for DDR and SDR SDRAM

Shiny black PCB

This left consumers in a peculiar situation: pay a little more for an AMD-760 board even though it may not have all the features you want (At the time, many AMD-760 boards were only available with 2 DIMM sockets and limited overclocking options, realizing the situation a few motherboard manufacturers announced second-generation AMD-760 boards, but they were not widely available.), or settle for a motherboard utilizing VIA's KT266 or ALi's MAGiK1 DDR chipset? The latter solution may not offer the same levels of performance, but costs less and typically offers more features. When the SiS 735 chipset combined the feature set of the VIA and ALi chipsets with the performance of AMD-760, the online community was extremely eager to see if those same characteristics held true for final boards shipping at retail. After all, we've all seen hand-tested reference boards fail to live up to the hype.

Fortunately, it appears that isn't the case with the SiS 735 chipset. If our K7S5A from ECS is any indication, we have a feeling the SiS 735 chipset is going to be a very popular solution among enthusiasts and price-conscious consumers alike. Sounds like an oxymoron doesn't it? Trust us, it isn't!

Our Vantec cooler matches the ECS heatsink

K7S5A system assembled

Features

SiS 735 chipset

Support AMD Athlon/Duron (K7) Processors

Two 184-pin DDR DIMMs: Support DDR200, DDR266

Two 168-pin DIMMs: Support PC100, PC133 SDRAM

UltraDMA 33/66/100

LAN: MAC integrated in SiS735 & PHY on board

AC97 Audio Codec on board

1 AGP/5 PCI/1 AMR Configuration

ATX Size (304 mm x 244 mm)