posted 10-01- 06:37 PM               

It supports SD and DDR ram and onboard lan and sound.

I'm using the ECS K7S5A, the first board supporting it, and I'm loving it. $109 Canadian

Some people arn't into ECS and this board doesn't support overclocking with out an aftermarket overclocking bios.

Anyways, new boards with more features by more mainstream makers are on the way.

An Asus board mid october.

A Jetway and a LeadTek, are also on the way soon.

Check the news here for more info.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/index.stm

Just figured this could be good info for people that were waiting for non VIA boards to upgrade. Although the newer VIA chipset is looking great.

posted 10-01- 07:01 PM            

Heard the SiS chipset was very good and very well priced.

posted 10-01- 09:02 PM               

I sent that one back to go with this one.

I looked at the AMD chipset boards but it was even more expensive then the A7V.

Also some of the AMD chipset boards still used the VIA southbridge chips that were causeing all the SBlive and data corruption problems on the KT133A boards.

posted 10-02- 03:00 AM               

Usually they have to be on different channels, like from the primary to the secondary. In my case, even on the same channel it corrupted or locked up the machine.

If you arn't having problems, thats great, ALOT of people arn't having the problems.

But enough are to warrent keeping distance from that south chip when possible.

And now that there are finnally more chip solutions, some people are going to be more into upgrading.

Like I said, I read all the reviews, all the good and the bad, and decided I could take care of any problems, there is numerous forums dedicated to the problems, and fixes, bios updates and work arounds.

NONE of them worked for me, so I won't use a board with that southbridge on it. A friends sister has a board with that chipset and isn't having any problems.

Like I said my problem could have been a one off defect. But I figured if the new sis735 boards were out and getting great reviews, AND supported DDR ram, AND had onboard sound and Lan, AND were almost half the price (asus 197, ecs 109). Why not get one of those instead of trying another asus.

Now with the money I saved changing to the sis board, I can pick up a stick of 256 DDR ram.

The only thing I don't like abou this ECS board, is it only has 2 ram slots of each type, so your limited to 512megs of DDR unless you want to spend some crazy money, thats no biggy though.

And it doesn't support overclocking unless you are comfertable using a hacked overclocking bios.

THe new jetway, leadtek and asus boards support more features though, for people looking to upgrade.

Nforce boards should be out soon too, but I can't see them being as cheap.

And then theres the new via 266 chipset thats getting great reviews.