How will my motherboard affect my computer performance?

[Will1]

My current system (P2-350mhz) has become pretty aged and so i decided to go out and buy some new parts. I've been looking at a system including the ecs K7S5A motherboard and an AMD 1600xp cpu. After doing a little research i have found that the K7S5A is relatively inexpensive, yet most people have good things to say about it. i was wondering, will i regret buying such a cheap motherboard? how will this machine perform versus others with motherboards of double the K7S5A's price? Would the difference be noticable? I am interested in gaming and am concerned with how well my games will run.

By the way, the full package includes a K7S5A, 1600xp, geforce 2 mx, and 256mb PC2100 DDR-ram

thanks for help,
will

[iisbob]

I've been using this board just about since it's first debut-now with an Athlon XP 1700 on it. Nary a problem, in fact it has been one of the most dependable and easiest boards i've ever set up.


My current high end system: ECS K7S5A, 512 MB's PC2100 DDR SDRAM, Geforce 3 Ti500, 60 GB Maxtor-7200rpm dualbooting W98/W2K, cordless logitech optical mouse/keyboard, Athlon XP 1700 w/thermaltake sk-6 copper heatsink & 4500rpm +/- large bladed delta fan @ 32CFM, etc...


I run Quake I thru III, MS combat flight sim, Starlancer, Mechwarrior 4 & the black knight expansion, Elite Force + Expansion, Counterstrike, Rogue spear , Il-2 Sturmovik, Janes WWII fighters, etc...and i play them all in great quality and speed!!

VERY happy with this board!! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif


The only tips i have for you are to be sure to update to the latest BIOS, get the latest drivers for your peripheral's-and take your time building it. Start off with just the board, vid card, RAM and your floppy drive to make sure it boots correctly. Then add all the peripheral's one at a time.

Also i would recommend getting at least a 350 watt power supply ( 400> would be better ).

Enjoy!!

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iisbob
""I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
Mark Twain

[This message has been edited by iisbob (edited 12-09-2001).]

[Will1]

thanks for the input iisbob. i downloaded the newest bios for the motherboard and i have a question. when the time comes for me to build the machine, how and when do i set the bios to the new one?

thanks again

[integral]

There is a lot of traffic out there about this board. ECS/PChips is not known for its high quality board. They have a good board with in the K7S5a but alot of people have been haveing troubles with it. Some claim that it is because there are many 1st time builders using it. One common theme is the power supply you need a good solid 350W MIMIMUM supply, this is not the board as much as it is the AMD T-bird/ XP family of processors. Just count the power supply into your upgrade costs.

There was some effort at gathering some reliabliliy data on both the ECS and the Shuttle mobos, over on the Anandtech fourms. Both of these boards had about a 20% fail rate according to the polls taken. One interesting difference was that there was a statisticaly significat number of ECS boards that died after nealy a month of operation. I had a K7S5a which ran for 3 weeks, then died. I have replaced it with the Shuttle AK31 which is running fine.

You may want to chech the fourms at ocworkbench.com also there is a some very good info there about the ECS board.

GL