ECS L7S7A2 SiS 746 Mainboard Review (8)
Overclocker 31 Jan 2002

In our tests, the ECS L7S7A2 is a serious contender to the other chipsets. From most of the tests, we can see that it has overtaken VIA KT400 and is now a direct competitor to the nVIDIA nForce2. Although it is not the fastest board available right now, it poses a challenge to the nForce2 board especially in terms of content creation and business applications. No doubt the nForce2 boards still do better in the memory intensive tests, it is merely a difference of 3% difference (in graphical tests) compared to the L7S7A2.

When we compared the board to the SiS 746FX reference board, we find that the L7S7A2 does perform pretty well considering that it is the first bios which is probably not tuned up for performance as yet. We expect ECS to work on some parameters to make it even faster. In fact, while benchmarking, we find that the ECS L7S7A2 performs well in disk benchmarks too.

As we have mentioned before, L7S7A2 has a neat feature. It has support for the latest multimedia connections like USB 2.0, 1394, S/PDIF etc. Overclocking wise, this board has the 1mhz fsb stepping and vdimm, vcore adjustments. It is a pity that the multiplier can't be set for 13x and above. The vdimm, vcore also has limited selections (3). It would be much better if all these settings are built into the BIOS. For those of you who are into overclocking, we managed to use a 2400+ to test the max FSB it can go. Without any modifications done with the board or special cooling used, we managed to run our AXP2400+ at 9 x 191Mhz at CAS 2 Ultra steadily. In fact, we can POST but hang in W2k while at 200Mhz x 10. Well, overclocking is fun and how far you can go really depends a bit on luck and cooling devices used. I think readers are more capable of modding the board to reach 200mhz without a problem considering that I am not really a person who mods for overclocking.

Overall, we find this board is another breakthrough for ECS for coming out with a simple yet powerful board which appeals to those who need the basic multimedia functions. It's a pity that there isn't any Serial ATA connectors on board and RAID supported.

At publication time, no price information is provided as it is Chinese New Year. We hope to see this board at a low price of perhaps USD80 or less.

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