[badgers]

Hi I'm the guy who has been on an all in one mobo kick lately.

well I have read and thought and I want opinions on the above board combined with an Inno3d GeForce2 MX400 64mb agp.

I read some good reviews of the board and the vid card.

I think I may give my FIL my current box and make a new one for myself.

does this board OC at all.

does any one think that the PC2400 mem is worth the money? on this board?

is that manufacturer a bad choice for the vid card. Price watch had the vid card for $70 bucks. I am not a heavy gamer. I am more interested in the mod from geforce to Quadro2. because I do mostly 2D AutoCAD and programming.

is the vid card overkill?
sorry to bother but I almost bought the PC chips rig and you all changed my mind. When I started looking I went from dirt cheap to something decent for myself.

I have a vodoo 3 2000 AGP not overclocked and it is fine for my gaming needs(UT and that is it)
I am not interested in Vodoo anymore since the buyout.

any opinions are welcome. I have the heatsink thing under control. Is the IBM 60GXP still the best choice in hard drives?

I run Win200 and Visual Basic, Visual C++, and autocad. Anybody think that a raid board would be worth it? At work a PIII800 takes about 4 min to build most apps. So I figure there must be some disk action going on.

Thank you for your time and have a good day

[SickBoy]

If you're heavy into Autocad, I'd look into the software Quadro hack (can be found on the front page of this website). You'll get just as much performance in UT and AutoCAD will be a world better. I worked at PTC this summer, and we had a dual 1GHz machine that flew on Pro/E and AutoCAD, mostly because it had a Quadro2 Pro in it.

As far as RAID, you'd have to add a seperate RAID card to the K7S5A. Unless you're dealing with huge CAD files, I think RAID might be unneccessary. If you absolutely must hav RAID, I'd say stick with the K7S5A - it has some of the best memory scores at stock settings, and add a RAID card.

As far as HD's, I like Western Digital.... but I really don't have an enormous amount of experience in that department. I've had a 3.2 GB Fujitsu, a 13.6 GB Maxtor, and a 30 GB WD. So far the WD has been best but the others were 5400 RPM and were ATA66 or slower.

SickBoy

[Hugo 59]

As far as overclocking goes there is a bata bios out which allows you to chang fsb settings. This is what amdmb.com said about it.

"Overclocking on the ECS K7S5A is a bit more challenging than on other motherboards. While they don't offer the ability to change the voltage or multipliers, you can edit front side bus modification with their latest bios, but the FSB selections are limited. Your only choices are: 100, 112, 133, 138 and 150 MHz. Having been spoiled by the 1 MHz increments that many other motherboard manufacturers are offering, this may seem a bit of a disappointment. They have included the option to run the FSB at 133 MHz and the system memory at 166 MHz, which is rather interesting as an overclocking option. Overall however, if the overclocking is what you plan on doing, the ECS K7S5A may not be your first choice of motherboards."

They did give the board a very good review though 9 out of 10 stars.

[!-=sky=-!]

.....i would recommend the asus v7100pro 32mb geforce2 mx400 over the inno3d anytime....or maybe ATI cards because you mentioned about doing 2D autocad work and the geforce2 series might be kind of blurry at 2D

i tried two inno3d cards and they both sucked......one was a geforce2 mx400 32mb and the other was a 64mb

[.. AE 86 ..]

agree with u jensen baby

asus is good

[organicker]

the ecs k7s5a is a great board for the money. heck, it is a great board anyway you look at it. at the moment, however, it does not offer a lot in the way of oc'ing. ocworkbench has a great forum virtually dedicated to this board and also has an oc'ing bios that will allow you to adjust fsb. i would recommend this board to anyone that didn't need to change the multiplier or vcore right now.

organicker

[klosters64a]

I'm running a Voodoo 3/2K on the ECS K7S5A. Works just fine for UT, anyway. A GF 256 paints a nicer picture, but if you're not A-B-ing the two Vidcards, the Voodoo is just fine. I've never messed with Autocad, so I don't have a clue--except that the Voodoo is probably a bad choice for it.

I've seen the BM's for a couple of 64 Mb GF2 MX-400's that show a ~15% increase in performance over an original 32 Mb GF 256. Whassup with that?

As mentioned, the K7S5A isn't an OCer's dream board. I don't have a problem with that, as the economic reason for OCing Athlons is just about extinct. The sport remains, of course.

My ECS has been rock stable. Unfortunately, I read a review that stated that IBM 75GXP HDD's(I have a 45 Gb 75GXP. Not a secure feeling--at all) make using the "Ultra" setting for your RAM impossible. From what I read on the BBS at www.storagereview.com , the new IBM 60GXP's are not a good investment. It's time to jerk IBM's chain, hard. I suggest avoiding both the old 75GXP's and the newer 60GXP's.

Some people love/hate every brand of IDE HDD. If I bought one today, I guess Maxtor or WD would be my choice. Ya never know until you have bought 'em! Just make SURE that a prospective Maxtor is NOT a Quantum!

[badgers]

thanks for the replies.
When I did a search of the discussion board at www.storagereview.com It seemed that the 60 did not have the problems the 75's did. Only two people had problems with the drive.

anyway, I think I might get the ATI 32 meg Dual vid card.
Programming and debugging is easier with two 19" monitors!

I am sure I will loose 3D performance but I spend to much time playing video games anyway......

anyone have a link or experience with converting a promise IDE card to a raid card? to those PCI cards support ATA 100 RAID?

I always do this, start out with cheap on the brain but end up with all the bells and whistles, (RAID, two moinitors, PC2400 ram yadda yadda yaddya)

Well Thank you for your time and have a good day