ECS K7S5A and RT2000

[Rob100]

Hi all (esp Dr M as I know he loves this board).

My PIII 850 is starting to feel slow so I guess an upgrade is in order. Now I know this board is on the RT2500 mobo list as compatible, but the RT2000 list is so out of date...

Question is... has anyone used an RT2000 and with the K7S5A? If so, anything I should know...?

Thanks in advance.


Rob.

[Rob100]

I had a look on Matrox's RT2000 support forum and it seems a few people have used this combination with success, so I'll probably give it a go.

Rob.

[Dr Mordrid]

I've used an RT-2000 on it with no problems at all. In cact it's got EXCELLENT PCI bus performance, which is exactly what the RT-2000/2500 cards need.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

I have ordered one of these (with LAN) to have a play with. I still don't understand why it's so cheap!!

Rob.

[Marshmallowman]

They have a single chip chipset(northbrdge and southbridge are in the same chip) so manufacturing costs are genuinly lower, less traces for the mobo as well.

[Dr Mordrid]

I put a note in the general hardware list that I have also set up a K7S6A system in the lab.

The K7S6A uses the SiS745 chipset which adds support for DDR333 ram. In addition it has a better cable header layout, a much more configurable BIOS including some overclocking features and APIC support, which means >15 IRQ's in Win2K/XP.

It also shares the K7S5A's very good PCI -> memory performance. GAWD....I wish other boardmakers would design boards with this emphasis instead of always going for CPU -> memory performance as a reflex.

PCI bandwidth emphasis means a slight reduction in CPU/CPU benchmarks and MPEG encoding speed, but it's SO nice when using more than one high bandwidth device in a system.

One feature subtraction: no LAN

$70-80 USD

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

What's the best bet with this board then? Should I use ACPI or switch off in bios and install (Win2k) as standard PC? Also do you have idea what PCI's share with what (other slots, on board stuff etc) as the manual is pretty useless....

Thanks,


Rob.

[Dr Mordrid]

ACPI = Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

APIC = Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller

DAMN M$ for naming things so closely that you can confuse them.

The K7S5A doesn't have APIC but does have ACPI.

The K7S6A has both APIC and ACPI.

APIC is a different setting from ACPI but when they are both in a BIOS they should be used together.

Based on my experiences with the RT-2000;

when using the K7S5A or any other a non-APIC system with ACPI turned off in the BIOS and install the OS as Standard PC.

when using the K7S6A I would set up the BIOS with APIC and ACPI both enabled and install the OS normally.

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd give some feedback on this.

Last weekend I finally made the switch and re-built my video system from scratch on this board. It wasn't all plain sailing, but everything seems to good now. Overall the system does feel faster than my P3B-F/PIII800 system.

I decided to disable ACPI in the BIOS and install Win2K as a Standard PC. I have disabled COM1/2, parallel, USB and the on board sound. So the only on-board "extra" I'm making use of is the LAN which seems pretty good.

Let me explain a few of the problems I had.

1) The position of the IDE and FDD headers. These are so "low" on the board that standard cables were way too short in my AOpen full tower case to reach the upper 5 1/4" bays. I had to make my own, but more on that later.

2) Only having 2 IDE's on board was a pain as I wanted to fit numerous IDE devices. I decided to put my DVD-ROM and CDRW on the boards master channels and fit an IDE removable caddy on both slaves. Then I put my 2 x WDC 60gb harddrives on my FT100's Secondary controller as master/slave for my video raid array (these drives are so much happier working like this than they ever were both as masters!) and on the Primary FT100 controller I have my boot drive (master) and have put another drive as the slave just for additional storage - both 30gb 75GXP's.

3) I had problems with my caddy drives (ATA33) refusing to work in DMA mode when working as a slave to the DVD/CDRW - they kept defaulting to PIO (argh!). They worked okay on their own as masters. I tried 40 and 80 wire IDE cables (I was getting desperate), but still same old problem. Now despite no IDE drivers being supplied for the K75SA (Win2K has some SIS drives built in), I had a look on the CD and found some IDE drivers that were meant for the P4S5A (VGA\AGPVxd\P4S5A\Win2K_XP\IDE) and these worked a treat! DMA is now working 101%.

4) I did initially experience a few lock-ups, but these all took place when heavily using my secondary display (Millenium 2 PCI). Maybe it was drivers thing - I've now gone back to the default Win2K ones and all seems well for last few days. Okay I've lost PowerDesk on the second monitor, but this is minor.

5) Lack of PCI slots was a worry (thanfully I have the version of this board with on board LAN) as I've filled them all (except slot 1 as this shares with AGP as normal), but I've managed to get eveything working on it's own IRQ. The slots do normally share with on board USB and audio, but I'm not using these.

I could go on for hours, but I'm shattered... I will probably run with the system as is for a few months, but plan to upgrade CPU (XP1700 at the moment) to a XP2100/2200 or higher in a few months time, plus add a DVD writer - but thats another story.

Rob.

[Dr Mordrid]

In my Apex Supercase I put the CD's up in the 5.25" bays on longer cables and the RAID drives in 4 of the 6 3.5" bays, which are very low in the case and right next to the Fasttrak100 card. This allows them to use the short 16" cables that came with the FT100.

The floppy bay is right over the RAID bays and very close to the ECS's FDD header. The boot drive is in an ATA100 capable bay/caddy in the bottom 5.25" bay and works fine.

The DVD and CD burner get the secondary master/slave and the boot gets the primary master as usual. Primary slave is open.

An AthlonXP 2000+ or faster is a good idea. Mine runs VERY nicely.

Installing the MB's software is always a good idea

Dr. Mordrid