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Summary
As one of the first mainboard to bring the integrated SIS 735 chipset to market, the ECS K7S5A reveals blazingly fast performance at a budget price. Integrated audio and 10-100T fast ethernet add to the value of the board and the possibility to simultaneously run two network cards without any installation hassles make the K7S5A a very attractive solution for the system integrator. Overclocking possibilities are present but need to be viewed with caution as boot failures and POST errors may occur. A similar scenario developed with the test board whenever the memory was switched from SDRAM to DDR or vice versa when the IBM GXP75 was used. The onboard AC97 sound is useable only with Windows98SE or higher and delivers marginally acceptable quality. Despite these shortcomings, the ECS K7S5A should be a top contender for anyone seeking optimal performance without overclocking. At an average street price of about US$65, the value of the ECS K7S5A can hardly be beaten.
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ECS
Despite being the world's second largest manufacturer of mainboards, EliteGroup is a relatively unknown player in the retail channel. In the past, most of their boards were not too inspiring, however usually, of at least decent quality which has made ECS some kind of an insider tip for many users who's primary goal was not overclocking but a stable setup at reasonable cost. Currently, ECS, Chaintech and MSI are the only manufacturers to have a mainboard based on the Silicon Integrated Systems (SIS) 735 chipset in their repertoire which, as we reported in our Computex Taiwan2001 coverage, features a unique "monolithic" chipset. Briefly, rather than relying on separate North and South Bridges for the memory / AGP and I/O interface, SIS has integrated both control logics into a single chip. This integrated design sacrifices some of the versatility of separate controllers but offers the benefit of currently unsurpassed data bandwidth between the two components.
The SIS 735 chipset
In short, the integrated SIS 735 system controller encompasses two separate units conforming to the classical picture of North Bridge (memory and AGP interface) and South Bridge (PCI, IDE and peripherals interface). However, since both units are integrated within the same silicon, the proximity allows for a much more efficient interface without the burden of elaborate trace routing through the mainboard's PCB. The actual interface consists of eight separate channels, each 32 bit wide and running at 33 MHz (133 MB/sec) to provide a total of 1.06 GB/sec of communication bandwidth between the two units. The eight channels are split into four "upstream" and four "downstream" connections. Every design needs a name and SIS christened the interface Multi Threaded I/O Link or short MuTIOL.
Schematics of the SIS 735 integrated core logic. The silicone features two separate units equivalent to the classical North and South Bridges that are internally linked through eight separate channels of 133 MB/sec bandwidth each for a total interconnect bandwidth of 1.06 GB/sec.
Anyone who ever has struggled with conflicting timings of sound and network, in particular, in integrated solutions with the on board video, meaning that either one or the other device was working properly because of bandwidth limitations of the PCI bus will certainly appreciate the 8-fold increase in overall traffic capacity offered in theory by the MuTIOL interface but how does it perform in real world situations? Moreover, is there any benefit from the MuTIOL design over the standard PCI bus? The rest of the industry has answered the latter point already. Intel's hub design using a 266 MB/sec interconnect between the GMCH (graphics and memory controller hub) and the ICH (I/O controller hub) followed by VIA's VLink not to mention Hypertransport as implemented in the upcoming nVidia Crush chipset or the upcoming GIO3 have already turned their back on the PCI interconnect. Still, current solutions remain limited to 266 MB/sec.
The need for additional bandwidth is becoming rather obvious. Where about one year ago, UATA/66 drives were already capable of saturating the 133 MB/sec data transfer limit of the PCI interface, storage technology has taken another giant leap towards 133 MB/sec burst transfers. This means that even the 266 MB/sec interconnect can be jammed effectively with file transfers from one drive to another. Here is where the SIS chipset really shines and data provided by SIS show a noticeable improvement over any currently marketed solution. In this review, we will not go into the subject of data transfer across the bus but rather concentrate on one production board using the SIS 735 chipset: the ECS K7S5A and its performance and stability under standard operating conditions. Further, the K7S5A offers an almost ideal platform for a different angle of looking at the performance delta between SDRAM and DDR.
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