ECS K7S7A coming....looks like an editors board

[Dr Mordrid]

The rundown;

SiS 746+S chipset
AGP-8x
DDR333 (DDR400?)
IEEE-1394
USB 2.0
ATA/133

No word on how many IEEE-1394 ports there will be, but the SiS 746 suports up to 3. The SiS 746 also supports DDR400, but no word if the K7S7A will support it.

Rumored price: $85 USD
Rumored release: supposedly shipped mid-June

Yummy

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Yes it is interesting isn't it..

How many PCI slots does it have?

[GT98]

Does the SIS 746 Chip support Serial ATA at all?

[Dr Mordrid]

1. K7S7A has 5 PCI slots.

2. The SiS 746 currently uses the SiS 793 SB, which does not support Serial ATA. Serial ATA 150 comes in with the SiS 794 SB, which should appear in Q3-Q4.

Just in time for the K7S8A or maybe as an in-line production update? We'll see.

3. Another upcoming change is to MuTIOL 1066 mhz. This will double throughput of SiS's MuTIOL Northbridge/Southbridge high speed bidirectional bus from the current 533 mhz. Wow....

Dr. Mordrid

[Schorsch]

Re: ECS K7S7A coming....looks like an editors board

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
The SiS 746 also supports DDR400, but no word if the K7S7A will support it.

According to the official data sheet the SiS746 doesn't offer support for DDR400:

http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/oa/socketa/746.htm

Nevertheless it is an extremely interesting chipset...

[Dr Mordrid]

I should have put "possibly" in that sentence, but earlier;

Did you notice the (DDR400?) ?

How about the +S in the chipset name? Hmmm....

If you know SiS's site at all you know it's often behind times by not a little. Also note that many, many sites are now reporting that the SiS746 will have DDR400 support and some of these mentions are in show reports from Taiwan.

We'll see if it pans out.

Dr. Mordrid

[Schorsch]

The latest news on this topic is that DDR400 will be supported by a new version of the SIS746 which is to be called 746DX and will appear in Q3. You can find the article here:

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2002/07/15&pages=04&seq=19

This might be an explanation for the confusion around the 746 chipset and the memory it supports...

[sundog2k]

TX4 controller gonna be an issue?

Do you think that they will have the issue with the TX4 figured out by then? Sounds like an excellent mobo, but I do have plans to use a TX4 in my new system.

Thanks!

Mike

[Nethermancer]

Is this an Athlon or P4 board? Is this the rumoured dual channel DDR chipset that was supposed to be coming out this year? On a side issue would the new P4 2.8GHz be better from an encoding point of view than a dual athlon board? I know 2 Athlon MPs would be faster for SMP stuff but what about when taking into account general Windows 2000 use and especially the SSE2 optimised Divx Codec?

[Dr Mordrid]

TX4 has worked great on my SiS systems. It's been problematic on the Gigabyte GA-7VRX though. IMO a MB or chipset issue, but can't tell which yet.

Dr. Mordrid

[KRSESQ]

AMD socketA (see tech link)

Tempting...

You early adopters let me know what you think.

Kevin