Elite Group ECS K7S5A Review

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Elite Group ECS K7S5A
3 stars
Average rating for this product is: 3 out of 5

From 8 ratings and 58 reviews

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Bay155's Review of Elite Group ECS K7S5A Motherboard

14th Sep 2004

Overall Rating

4.5 stars
  • Value for money
    5 stars
  • Ease of Set Up
    4.5 stars
  • Time Motherboard Owned
    Over 1 Year
Good Points

Inexpensive, fast computer.


Bad Points

Does not like company "A" graphics cards. Works fine with Nvidia's.


General Comments

Elite Group ECS K7S5A - Built 3 systems with AMD 2400XP and 2000XP and the ECS K7S5A Pro Motherboards. One is using 768 MB SDram and 2 using 512 MB DDR. Loaded them with Win XP Pro. The systems do not like certain graphic cards. The driver caused instability and system lock. I had two older (2 yrs old) graphics cards (These were older high end gaming cards, one had 64 MB and another had 128 MB.) that refused to work on these systems without causing crashes and system lock. One stable system was using a new Nvidia MX400 with 64 MB and was stable as heck. Ran a battery of tests and remained stable. ...and they played my games with great graphics. I contacted Microsoft on-line only to confirm the driver is causing memory conficts. I contacted company "A" and could not get resolution. Rather than fight the driver software, I switched all the systems to Nvidia MX400 cards w/64 MB at $29.00 each and all the systems are stable. Previously, I was a great fan of company "A". Recently their drivers are causing issues even on my "I" based systems when the drivers were updated.

It is because of the stablity issues that arose during my system builds that I have setup my boot to be very conservative.

1) No fast boot. Always perform a system memory check. At times I have by bypassed this option with no ill effects after changing the graphics card.

2) I locked the system to operate at 133MHZ CPU and 133 MHZ Memory.

3) I have configured the bios for components in my system optimized.

4) I locked my bios so it cannot be updated or accessed from the outside.

There have been no problems with stability. This includes one system I have configured for my 2 yr old and 4 yr old daughters.

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