What do you know about the A7S333?

Hi all. My friend, a total noob to the 'real world' of computers, got a comp off ebay, and it came with an Asus A7S333 motherboard. We were planning on overclocking his CPU for him, and wanted to know what people know about this board. Any little experiences or bits of info are much appreciated

any info?

~bump~
any info?

well, here is Asus' page on it, doesn't look to bad, has a few overclocking features, but SiS isnt known for hardcore overclocking.

Sorry, but it's actually a very poor OC'er. No voltage controls or 1:5 divider for starters.

that's okay, in the 4 months since i posted the question, my friend got a new Giga-byte board, and is overclocking fairly well - - except that for some strange reason, whenever he does a cold-boot...he needs to reset the bios and remove the battery for the system to start...(it 'did' get hit by lightening, but, lol...)

deadkenny said:

Sorry, but it's actually a very poor OC'er. No voltage controls or 1:5 divider for starters.

Click to expand...

what is a 1:5 divider??? man, i've been an amd fan for a long time, and i've never heard about a 1:5 divider... don't the intels have a divider? i have an epox 8rda+ and i don't think it has a 1:5 divider either... i have a friend that has a a7s333, and i told him if he wants to overclock, then he should get the nf7-s or the 8rda3+

as far as overclocking on the a7s333 goes:
+Easy DIP Switch or Jumperfree™ overclocking from BIOS (multi i believe)
+Accurate 1MHz adjustments of system-bus-frequency
+Adjustable FSB/PCI/MEM ratio

voltage would help out a lot, but you can use this page to change the voltage of the cpu by connecting the sockets under the cpu.

all motherboards in existence have 'dividers' which is the means by which your mobo comes up with the PCI frequency (by dividing the FSB by, in this case, 5) - - nForce boards are the only exception to this, they dont have a timing chip, but instead generate the freqnencies independent of eachother.

filip04 said:

what is a 1:5 divider??? man, i've been an amd fan for a long time, and i've never heard about a 1:5 divider... don't the intels have a divider? i have an epox 8rda+ and i don't think it has a 1:5 divider either... i have a friend that has a a7s333, and i told him if he wants to overclock, then he should get the nf7-s or the 8rda3+

as far as overclocking on the a7s333 goes:
+Easy DIP Switch or Jumperfree?overclocking from BIOS (multi i believe)
+Accurate 1MHz adjustments of system-bus-frequency
+Adjustable FSB/PCI/MEM ratio

voltage would help out a lot, but you can use this page to change the voltage of the cpu by connecting the sockets under the cpu.

Click to expand...

Dividers explained above. Since voltage adjustment in the BIOS is quite common, I feel completely justified in stating that the A7S333 is a poor OC'er for not having them. I mean even ECS has included voltage adjustment in their recent boards. The adjustable FSB / MEM ratio is no big deal, since it's only a few descrete ratios that are available (1:1, 4:5 etc.) based on the assumption that the FSB and mem are running at 'stock' settings (100, 133, 166). In fact the PCI ratio is not adjustable, it kicks in automatically and there is no 1:5 ratio (aka divider). This means that if you set the FSB to 166MHz (aka 333) then the PCI bus will be running at 42MHz (i.e. 1:4 ratio with 166MHz). The fact is that the 1MHz increments are only really useful for max'ing out the processor IF the PCI bus can be locked (e.g. nForce2) or there is a ratio to keep it at or near spec. Otherwise something on the PCI bus is going to crap out long before your CPU gives up. Try running your PCI bus at 42MHz and you'll see what I mean.