ECS 755-A2 Socket754 Mainboard on SiS755 Chipset Review

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
02/21/2004 | 12:59 PM

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.

Elitegroup decided to save on the accessories supplied with this low-end product. The package with the mainboard includes:

• A CD with necessary drivers;
• One FDD cable;
• One Parallel ATA/133 and one SerialATA-150 cable;
• I/O shield for the back panel of the system case.

Not much, you know. There are no USB brackets, and there are very few HDD cables, but that costs so little! We were also disappointed to find that the CPU retention mechanism (fastening bracket) is not included into the accessories and is not present on the mainboard. AMD includes these mechanisms with their boxed processors, but if you happen to have an OEM CPU version, you may get into trouble finding this bracket as such mechanisms don’t sell individually.

Closer Look

Once again, ECS 755-A2 mainboard is a “value” product and its characteristics are determined by SiS755 chipset only. There are no external onboard controllers, but the chipset is advanced enough for you not to really lack anything.

The mainboard supports all Socket 754 processors of the Athlon 64 family. There is also no doubt that it will have no problems with the upcoming Athlon 64 3700+ processor, too. There is one important moment, though: the CPU voltage regulator of the ECS 755-A2 is two-channel rather than three-channel as in many other Socket 754 mainboards. At the same time, Elitegroup didn’t save on the quality and quantity of the capacitors for the filter of the regulator, so their solution seems adequate enough. When testing and using this mainboard, we had no problems related to low-quality CPU powering.

ECS 755-A2 can take two DDR DIMM modules into its two slots. It supports DDR266/333/400 SDRAM as it becomes a regular mainboard for the Athlon 64. However, you can again see some economical measures here: most Athlon 64 mainboards from other manufacturers come with three memory slots. Anyway, I am not inclined to consider this a crucial drawback. The memory controller of the Athlon 64 supports four memory banks, so you can only fill all three DIMM slots with single-sided modules. Moreover, if the Athlon 64 system has three memory modules, it automatically loses the useful and interesting Cool’n’Quiet technology.

Cool’n’Quiet is supported by the reviewed mainboard. Moreover, ECS 755-A2 belongs to the small category of mainboards that allow disabling Cool’n’Quiet in the BIOS Setup. By the way, this technology works at FSB-overclocking, too, since it reduces the CPU clock-rate (when the processor is idle) by adjusting the CPU multiplier.

The North Bridge of SiS755 chipset is connected with the processor through the full-speed HyperTransport bus, 16-bit wide both ways and working at a frequency of 800MHz (DDR). This explains why ECS 755-A2 is faster than mainboards on nForce3 150 chipset, which has the HyperTransport bus working at a lower frequency and proving less bandwidth.

The available slots are: one AGP 8x (supports 0.8/1.5V graphics cards), five PCI, and one CNR, a rare slot nowadays, which is designed for a soft-modem, for example.

As I have already mentioned above, the support of all external devices and the corresponding features of ECS 755-A2 are implemented in the South Bridge of the chipset, the SiS964 chip: eight USB 2.0 ports, AC’97 audio, Fast Ethernet (10/100 Mb/s), Parallel and Serial ATA.

Four of the mainboard’s eight USB 2.0 ports are on the back panel, and another four are onboard. USB brackets are not included with the mainboard, so you will have to buy them optionally.

Sound capabilities of the ECS 755-A2 are implemented in the Realtek ALC655 codec. This codec complies with the AC’97 specification version 2.3 and supports new technologies for easy connection of audio peripherals (like Jack Sensing, for example). The audio driver itself identifies the type of the connected audio device and warns the user if anything is wrongly attached. The codec supports SPDIF, and the PCB carries an appropriate connector. Meanwhile, there is no bracket with additional audio connectors and an SPDIF output enclosed with the mainboard.

Realtek RTL8201 is a physical controller installed on the mainboard. It uses the abilities of the South Bridge to implement fully Fast Ethernet support (10/100 Mb/s).

Like other new-generation chipsets, SiS755 supports Parallel and Serial ATA interfaces. They are both available in ECS 755-A2: two ATA/133 and two SerialATA-150 channels are laid out on the board. The SerialATA controller of the chipset South Bridge supports RAID 0 and 1 arrays, so you can unite your pair of hard drives for higher data reliability or better performance. The SerialATA connectors on ECS 755-A2 differ from ordinary ones as they have a “curb” that protects the connected cables from accidental disconnect.

Strangely enough, ECS 755-A2 doesn’t support hot-plugging of SerialATA devices, although this is a standard feature written into the SerialATA specification. Anyway, this is a not a critical drawback. The capabilities of ECS 755-A2 mainboard end here. Every necessary function, save for IEEE1394, seems to be present.

PCB Design

The design of ECS 755-A2 is unusual because the engineers’ primary task was to make the solution as inexpensive as possible. The PCB is small, only 220mm wide, you can rarely see such PCBs nowadays. This dramatic reduction of the PCB size affected the components layout. The main surprise is the DIMM slots being placed along the right edge of the PCB: only Soltek used to place memory slots this way. However, I have to stress that these slots are too close to the processor socket, and you may find it hard to install massive coolers that expand to the top like those from Zalman. Moreover, with the processor Socket 754 located this way we put the memory modules under a stream of hot air from the CPU cooler. It’s no good for the memory as well as for the processor cooling (airflow is hindered).

As for the major connectors, IDE connectors and the ATX power supply connector are placed pretty conveniently on the PCB. The 12V power connector is usually shifted by manufacturers to the back part of the mainboard, while engineers from Elitegroup found a way to squeeze this connector in front of the Socket 754: this way the power cable won’t prevent proper airflows.

The FDD connector is not very conveniently placed: it is on the left part of the PCB, but it’s even worse with the onboard USB connectors. They stand before the first PCI slot (which is the closest to the AGP port), so there may be problems if you try to connect anything to them and use a graphics card with a massive cooling system at the same time.

The chipset’s North Bridge has a small passive aluminum heatsink on, which usually remains cool. The mainboard offers only two connectors for attaching system fans, which is rather insufficient according to the today’s standards.

The back panel of the mainboard has a standard layout, but without the second COM port (it is not even soldered onboard). Evidently, Elitegroup intends to use this PCB design for future products on the integrated SiS760 chipset, which is pin-compatible with the SiS755. There are only three audio jacks at the back panel: audio inputs are combined with audio outputs.

BIOS and Overclocking

Historically, it was difficult to overclock your processor on a mainboard from ECS. Most previous products from this company had limited overclocking options, and this policy is quite understandable: overclockers prefer more expensive, full-featured mainboards, rather than low-cost solutions from ECS. ECS 755-A2 should have been different, though. This is the first SiS755-based mainboard and it offers excellent performance and good functionality. However, this fact didn’t change Elitegroup’s approach to designing ECS 755-A2: the overclocker is unlikely to find it an exciting platform for his experiments.

All overclocking options are available in the BIOS Setup based on the Award microcode, in the Frequency/Voltage Control page:

You can’t get lost in the options, they are not that numerous:

• You can adjust the FSB frequency from 200 to 232MHz with 1MHz increment;
• You can change the memory voltage from 2.5 to 2.65V with 0.05V increment.

The FSB frequency range is rather small, and we are not allowed to change the CPU multiplier from the BIOS Setup. On the other hand, these functions are rarely used as currently available Athlon 64 processors seldom speed up to 232MHz FSB or higher and they cannot increase their multiplier at all. What’s more disappointing, you can’t change the Vcore, and this fact greatly limits the mainboard’s overclockability. Besides that, the maximum voltage the mainboard can serve to the memory may not be enough in some situations (many overclocker modules require 2.7V). It would also be nice to have an option of changing the AGP and HyperTransport bus frequencies, but you can’t hope to find it in ECS 755-A2. I guess you agree with me that this mainboard is definitely not for overclocking.

Yet another proof to the point is the fact that ECS 755-A2 cannot lock the frequencies of AGP and PCI buses at their standard values. In other words, these frequencies grow up in proportion to the FSB frequency, like in mainboards on the VIA K8T800 chipset. This fact wouldn’t be that catastrophic, if the controllers integrated into the South Bridge were tolerant to the PCI frequency increase. Practice shows that’s not the case. The SerialATA controller was the most sensitive to the PCI bus frequency and refused to work as soon as we increased the FSB clock-rate from 200 to 205MHz. That is, when the PCI frequency is above 34MHz, the SerialATA controller integrated into the SiS964 cannot recognize hard disk drives. So if you plan to overclock on ECS 755-A2, you’d better stick to Parallel ATA drives. By the way, VIA K8T800 is more robust in this respect: its SerialATA controller loses stability at about 220MHz FSB, or 36.6MHz PCI.

Other BIOS Setup pages don’t offer any rich overclocking friendly options, either. Particularly, you cannot manually adjust the memory timings, at least with the BIOS version 1.0 from 01.02.2004. The user is only allowed to change the memory frequency, while the timings will be set up automatically according to the data from the SPD module.

Hardware monitoring options look limited, too. The BIOS Setup monitors two basic voltages, two temperatures and rotational speeds of two fans. The CD you receive with the mainboard contains no utility for monitoring from the Windows. Anyway, the popular Motherboard Monitor can monitor ECS 755-A2 well enough.

Of course, we couldn’t help trying this mainboard during practical overclocking. We took an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor, the most suitable candidate for the place in the socket of this mainboard. The CPU was cooled down by an ordinary air cooler, Thermaltake Silent Boost K8. Special overclocker memory OCZ PC4000 Gold Edition, guaranteed stable work at frequencies up to 500MHz. With this memory we could overclock our Athlon 64 3000+ without increasing the memory frequency divisor (it was 1/10 from the CPU clock-rate in our tests, or “DDR400” as the BIOS Setup has it). For the above-mentioned reasons, we couldn’t use SerialATA drives in the disk subsystem; we installed an ATA/100 drive instead (Western Digital Caviar WD400JB).

I didn’t have much hope for good overclocking results here as ECS 755-A2 doesn’t offer any special means of increasing the processor Vcore. The maximum FSB frequency, at which the system remained stable, was 216MHz. That is, our processor acquired only 8% of frequency (from 2GHz to 2.16GHz). The mainboard lost stability at further FSB-overclocking. The result is not good for this processor as we overclocked it to 226MHz FSB on other mainboards, which allowed adjusting the Vcore. Thus, this limitation alone – no Vcore adjustment – reduces the overclockability of the ECS 755-A2 by 40% compared to mainboards that allow changing the CPU voltage. So let me say it once again: ECS 755-A2 does not suit for overclocking.

Meanwhile, overclockers shouldn’t disregard this mainboard completely. It’s quite probable that some other methods work here. For example, ocworkbench.com posted a guide to volt-modding this mainboard so that you could increase the Vcore and Vmem on the hardware level. If you don’t feel like modding your ECS 755-A2 with a soldering iron, you may wait for milder software methods. At least, enthusiasts developed special overclocker BIOSes and various utilities for previous ECS mainboards on SiS chipsets. Let’s hope they will come up with something like that for the ECS 755-A2, too. However, this is a long-term perspective. Right now, only volt-modding can help you to achieve any impressive overclocking results on the ECS 755-A2.

Performance

We chose ABIT KV8-MAX3 mainboard as a reference point for our ECS 755-A2. This Socket754 mainboard from ABIT is based on the VIA K8T800 chipset and is one of the fastest available solutions for the Socket 754 platform. I guess this comparison is a good trial for the new product from ECS.

We used the following testbed:

• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU;
• ABIT KV8-MAX3 and ECS 755-A2 mainboards;
• 1GB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX512-3200LLPRO, 2 x 512MB, 2-3-2-6);
• ASUS RADEON 9800 XT graphics card (Catalyst 4.10);
• RAID0 array of two Western Digital Raptor WD360GD HDDs.

The testbed ran under Microsoft Windows XP SP1; the mainboard BIOSes were set up for the best performance.

The following table lists the benchmarking results in various applications:

As you see, the performance level of ECS 755-A2 is high, mostly due to the SiS755 chipset, the fastest chipset for the Athlon 64 today. ECS 755-A2 mainboard is faster than ABIT KV8-MAX3 in most cases, although we have considered ABIT KV8-MAX3 to be the fastest mainboard according to our previous tests.

Conclusion

ECS 755-A2 mainboard we have introduced to you today is the first off-the-shelf product on the new SiS755 chipset for the Athlon 64 processor. Although SiS positions its chipsets as solutions for low-cost mainboards, and ECS 755-A2 is exactly this type of product, the chipset is simply wonderful. We have received another proof of its high speed characteristics. Due to SiS755 Elitegroup engineers built a mainboard with all the features a user expects to see in an inexpensive solution. Good functionality, excellent performance and low pricing distinguish ECS 755-A2 from the competitors.

Thanks to that, ECS 755-A2 may make a good foundation for a system with a junior Athlon 64 (3000+). Again, the kit including this mainboard and processor will cost you less than $300, which is quite an appealing price. Regrettably, ECS 755-A2 is no free from a few drawbacks that result from this very inexpensiveness. The manufacturer was too economical, and mostly at the expense of overclocking options. You get very average results with ECS 755-A2 when overclocking the CPU: you can’t lock AGP/PCI frequencies when increasing the FSB frequency, and you can’t increase the CPU voltage with the standard mainboard options. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend you this mainboard, if you are intending to overclock your CPU.

Highs:

• Highest performance;
• High stability;
• Low price.

Lows:

• Poor CPU overclocking options;
• Some drawbacks in the PCB design;
• Scanty accessories.