Asus A7S333 opinions please...

[Edguy]

been thinking alittle about trying one of the new chipsets from SiS, and i thought i'd just try an XP 1600+ cheap cpu with it.... main thought to replace my secondary system... a 550Mhz celly..

so the Asus A7S333 comes to mind.... and i just thought i'd ask here for experiences with this(and other SiS 745 based mobos)...

and..... experiences with the P4 chipset.. 645?....

stability.. compatibility (compared to the I845 and VIA ones)...

also..... (for money concerns.. as this is just a secondary system)... are there any SIS/SDRAM based mobos? for XP/P4...
might go down that road since i got alot of SDRAM lying around...

any thoughts/notes or whatever... very apreciated

[103er-Fan]

I have the MSI 745 Ultra and I am more than happy with it. Before that I had a VIA KT133 based mainboard, and had some trouble with it. The compatibility of the new mainboard is great, so is the stability: Better than the VIA one! It also has all the features you might need, there are even special versions with Firewire ports

You might also want to have a look at SiS 735 based mainboards, they have SDRAM slots, so you don't have to buy new RAM for your new secondary system. They are only slightly slower than SiS 745 mainboards.

[Edguy]

oooh.. great

glad to hear about your luck with the MSI board... it seems like the AMD platform is finally getting some good and reliable mobos

thanks a bounch for the input..... also.... do you know any boards with the 735 chipset? i really want sdram if it's possible....
and preferably made by MSI or ASUS or maybe AOPEN...
can't find any on asus website.....

thanks... apreciate it...

[Edguy]

also... the parhelia... how are you satisfied with the performance with it? and quality?

was thinking about it but the price told me not to... so it bacame a Ti4200 instead.....

cheers..

[Greebe]

Discussing Parhelia is best kept for another thread... or better yet read one of the many in Matrox Hardware.

The MSI 745 Ultra tops the Asus A7S333 in features/OCing ability and experience in using this chipset (Asus were late to the market with it)

Many of us here are looking forward to the next get SiS 746 chipset with it's meriad of features and bandwidth.

I'm not up on all of the SIS 735/745 chipsetted mb out on the market but ECS also makes them (Dr. Mordrid has one)

[Wombat]

The 745s are great, if you can find them. They're pretty much sold out, and manufacturers are already working on 746 boards instead.

ECS might have the only 735 board.

At any rate, I've definitely said "goodbye" to Via.

[103er-Fan]

Well, the only SiS735 I know about is actually the Elitegroup ECS-K7S5A, it has 2 SDRAM slots.

About the Parhelia:
Greebe is right, that should be better discussed in another thread. Here are the same rules as for all graphic cards: It depends on what you expect and want from a gfx card. Personally I am almost happy with my Parhelia, I am only suffering from some really poor performance in some games, but I don't really think that it is the fault of the P. View the Really bad performance thread in the Gaming forum opened by me, I will post an update there soon, including some benchmarks.


Oh right, I have to agree Wombat, for now I have definatly said goodbye to VIA, the SiS based boards are cheaper, almost as fast as VIA based boards and much more stable.

[Edguy]

hehe... sorry Greebe

just noticed before if left that he had a parhelia so i just thought i'd ask....

okay.....

hmm....
ECS has the only 735? i take it this was a not very popular chipset?

gonna check it out if it's possible to get....

otherwise i'll have to look into the MSI board...
about the Asus vs MSI... if we put aside the OC ability/features... how about pure stability?

and... how long before we'll see some 746 boards? or are they out already?

thanks so much for the tips guys

[Wombat]

No, 735 boards were not made by many manufacturers. It's understandable: the 735 was a miracle shot from a company previously known for second-class chipsets. But companies caught on fast ehough to profit from 745 boards.

As far as stability, this board has not locked up on me. It's been a solid and stable performer.

746 boards should be around soon, but they are a different design from the 7x5. It's not a single-chip solution, so we can expect new motherboard layouts, and unknown price.

[WyWyWyWy]

I ordered A7S333 and A7V333 for my flatmates (me still using P3 450 )

SiS745 has no problem at all.
VIA has some compatibility problem with the PCI and AGP card.

I noticed the VIA runs a little bit faster from benchmarks.

But I'd recommend SiS745, absolutely no problem at all. (Bought the A7V333 because he didn't want to buy another soundcard)

[Nuno]

ECS has the only 735? i take it this was a not very popular chipset?

735 was like a missed oportunity. When it was out it was the most performing Athlon chipset (AMD 760, KT266 and ALI Magik1 were the contenders at the time). VIA threatned with chipset shortages (hmmmm, were did we see that before?) to the motherboard manufacturers. That, combined with SiS less-than-proven record took many manufacturers away from the 735.

ECS being one of the biggest OEM motherboard manufacturers spotted one great business oportunity, couldn´t care less about VIA pressure and made one board that must have been one of the most sold motherboards ever: the K7S5A.

I have one of them and I couldn´t be happier. Once you try it it´s really difficult to go back to VIA P.O.S. any day. It´s one of the most reliable, compatible and troubleless piece of hardware I ever owned. Regular bios updates, third-party overclocking bios, the last one even support the XP2600+ !!!

The 745 is a 735 with official 133/166 support anyway - and 133/166 isn´t faster than 133/133 because it runs on assyncronous mode.

I would take a SiS 7xx chipset over any VIA KT-P.O.S anytime. Period.

[Ryu Connor]

Any of the KT333 + 8235 VIA boards would be a pretty good investment. VIA's driver team has finally got their act together and the engineers have worked out the AGP, PCI, and USB interface issues. It only took them five or six years, but they've finally succeeded.

I'd also give a long hard look at the nForce solutions available. The Asus A7N266-C, Abit NV7-133R, MSI K7N420 Pro, and the Leadtek K7N415DA are quite nice solutions.

[Dr Mordrid]

The software benchmarks mean nothing when comparing VIA and SiS boards.

Where the rubber hits the road is when you have high bandwidth cards in the system competing for resources. In this situation the SiS cards will blow the VIA's completely away, whatever generation they are.

This is why the Matrox Video group has not accepted any VIA boards for their RT.X card compatabioity list while SiS's chipsets are over-represented.

This difference in bandwidth will become more pronounced when the SiS 745 (Athlon) and SiS 648 (P4) systems come out. Their MuTIOL northbridge/southbridge pipeline is being doubled to 1 GB/s from 533 MB/s.

VIA's KT400 V-Link northbridge/southbridge pipeline is still stuck at 533 MB/s, and if past performance is any indication it'll run as if it's actually at 333 MB/s

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

Hmm....
Yet on a 745 mobo, agp driver is all that is neccesary....
on a via board ther's a whole package of drivers patches etc etc

edit: My postings seem to get more and more hard to understand

[Wombat]

I am not about to trust VIA. It wasn't just crappy drivers. It was also faulty hardware, deception, and refusal to admit any wrongdoing. Even if they suddenly produced top-notch hardware, the way they run their company would be sure to screw the end user somehow.
And I've been hearing the "Via finally got their act together" bit for every chipset they've released since the MVP3.