X-bit labs

ECS 755-A2 Socket754 Mainboard on SiS755 Chipset Review

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 02/21/2004 | 12:59 PM ]

We reviewed one very impatiently awaited product: SiS755 based mainboard from Elitegroup. This solution is one of the best value purchases for Socket754 processors, which boasts excellent performance due to SiS755 chipsets. Let’s take a closer look at this product to see how these features were implemented in the first mass mainboard.

Table of contents:

• Specification
  
• Closer Look
  
• PCB Design
  
• BIOS and Overclocking
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. presented users a nice gift for the last Christmas, their SiS755 chipset for the Athlon 64 platform. The gift was truly generous as our tests demonstrated (see our article called SiS755: New Chipset for Athlon 64 for details). SiS755 doesn’t yield to VIA K8T800 and NVIDIA nForce3 150 in terms of features and outperforms them in a big number of applications. SiS755 has had only one conspicuous drawback: until recently you couldn’t find a mainboard on it in retail stores. Now this deficiency is amended: next week Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) starts selling its SiS755-based mainboard, the ECS 755-A2.

This mainboard is not the first product to feature SiS755, actually. Elitegroup has already tried to develop a mainboard on SiS755. The outcome, ECS 755-A mainboard, was a kind of a failure: it was unstable with DDR400 SDRAM and the faulty design hindered the performance. Elitegroup engineers didn’t give up, though, but made some improvements and released 755-A2 version, free from those problems. This is a mainboard that can become really popular as it has a trump card in the hands, SiS755 chipset.

Elitegroup mainboards on SiS chipsets for AMD processors have always been popular as they were positioned as value solutions and cost accordingly. At the same time, they used to have quite acceptable characteristics. ECS 755-A2 shouldn’t make an exception. As far as we know, it is going to come to the market with $80-90 on the price tag. In other words, it will be among the best value mainboards for Socket 754 platform. We are going to take a really close look at this mainboard to find out if its claims for becoming a sales hit have any ground.

If this mainboard is all right, it may stimulate the invasion of AMD64-supporting systems into the mass market. For example, a kit including a junior Athlon 64 3000+ and this mainboard would cost less than $300. Not bad for such a high-performance system, don’t you think? Well, we will dedicate our conclusion to such matters, let’s now deal with the mainboard itself.

Specification

ECS 755-A2 mainboard is a revision of ECS 755-A (obviously, the original won’t be produced anymore) and formally differs from it by the official support of DDR400 SDRAM. You should be aware, too, that this mainboard may come without the network controller and with a simpler version of the South Bridge (SiS964L). This version may cost you a few dollars less, but you won’t have network and SerialATA RAID.