Advantages: This motherboard works in a great speed and stability.
Disadvantages: I have not found it, yet.

...did not build this PC in a day. It took me about 2 weeks to accomplish my mature planning of building my dream PC. Today, as its result - I still feel that my current PC is a great one because it works as I wish. Why am I writing about this opinion on ECS K7S5A? You might say, "Djohan, you've got the motherboard for quite a long time. And now there must be a lot of better motherboards in markets as the manufacturers are competiting. Then, why is this motherboard still recommended for us?" Hmm ... It is a nice comment. You are right! Well, I still recommend you to buy ECS K7S5A because I have tried on its performance on my own. It makes me sure that ECS K7S5A must be suitable for you, too. And personally, I think that having my ECS K7S5A with an AMD Athlon 1.33 could give me a pride because the technology is still supporting today... Read review

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Advantages: Great Value
Disadvantages: Some Revisons of this Board have memory problems....

...I have used many of these Mainboards to build systems for friends and customers and in general the boards are very easy to set up and in general give no problems at all. However there are a couple of things i would like to point out to any person wanting to buy this Mainboard. I Have built maybe 60 - 80 systems with this board and i can say that the only two problems i have had are (Memory) & (Overheating). Memory Problem, Easy Solution dont have 2 sticks of pc133 at the same time as this causes crashes for some unknown reason. The way i solved this for a customer was by taking his 2 256mb strips of memory out and replacing them with 1 512mb strip this solved the problem of crashing. Cpu Overheating Problem, When using an xp1800+ you have to go into bios and knock it down to 100mhz front side bus for the chip to run and if you dont... Read review

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Advantages: Easy to install
Disadvantages: None

...I have bought this PCI card a week ago. Reason: I have got a MSI K7T266Pro2 motherboard that only offer USB1.1 ports (1.5Mbytes/s maximum transfer rate). Since I have got devices that uses USB2.0 and without breaking my piggy bank to upgrade my computer, the most economical way is to install a PCI card that offers USB2.0 connections (up to 480Mbits/s or 60Mbytes/s, 40X faster than USB1.1) for 1 internal port and 4 external ports. Before you buy a USB2.0 PCI card, make sure that your motherboard got version 2.2 PCI slots which are USB2.0 compatible. If your motherboard hasn't got version 2.2 PCI slots or higher, don't bother. You need a motherboard upgrade. Also, your operating system needs to be windows 2000 service pack 4 or windows XP which provides appropriate drivers to support USB2.0. For the other operation systems... Read review

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Advantages: A very stable, high-speed board
Disadvantages: Does not support higher clock-speeds well, or AGP 4x, or the largest range of overclocking features known to man

...The Asus K7M, when I bought it, was widely regarded as the best avaliable board for the AMD K7-1 and K7-2 processors (slot A type). This is a reputation that, in my opinion, it deserved. Not only is it rock-solid stable, but it has a useful ability to scale up the FSB speed to 133MHz, enabling overclocking to a limited extent, although if you want to do this seriously, I would recommend getting a dedicated overclocking card. The board I got was the 'plain' board - that is, one without the on-board audio kit, as I already had a reasonable sound card. However, I am told that this is not of unreasonable qualiy, given that it is merely intended as a 'stop-gap' item, and not for 'serious' use. The lack of AGP 4x, and the inability to use processors at too high a clock speed, are the only problems I found with this board - but then, AGP 4x... Read review

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Advantages: Upgradeable (6 PCI slots), good value for money
Disadvantages: BIOS flash update may be needed in some cases

...I have bought this motherboard when I upgraded my computer. What has interested me most of all is its future upgradeability, namely number of PCI slots available for cards that I might purchase in the future. There are variety of retailers for this board charging variety of prices. The average price is around 95 pounds sterling inc. VAT, but if you shop around, you may be able to get it for as little as 57.60 including VAT. This motherboard has 6 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot (this is very positive, because ISA as a technology is out of date and most ISA cards are not properly supported by variety of operating systems), and an AGP slot for graphics cards. It also has three DIMM memory sockets, and would handle maximum 768 MB of RAM. As far as processor (CPU) is concerned, K7 Pro allows for up to Athlon 1 GB MHz, so I would recommend... Read review

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Advantages: All round great simulation game
Disadvantages: Takes a while to matser

...The NBA Games have been voted best sport simulation games for the past few years, and I think NBA 2K7 will just help to establish the top slot. NBA 2K7 gives you the serious action most basketball fans love, chance to become a legend on the court and gain superstar status. NBA 2K7 has had a bit of a update, comes with different camera views and all new animations The game feels realistic and looks great when moving you man around, the controls are responsive and easy to master. The shot stick is effective when it comes to scoring (Right stick). You have to learn the different moves; you just can't dive in and start playing. The default settings are a good place to start, not to easy but not to hard. But once you have started to master the moves you will be amazed how fluid the game becomes. You will be amazed at the types of baskets... Read review

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Advantages: Amazing graphics
Disadvantages: Difficult controls

...I thought this game was great...for the price you pay. Obviously as you can see in the screen shots the graphics are amazing. I have never seen anything like it. The gameplay is pretty good but the controls are really difficult at first and take alot of getting used to. I'm a big basketball fan and I have been playin NBA Live since I can remember so this was my first 2k sports purchase but I still feel myself being disappointed with it. To be honest the only reason I bought it was because there were no real bball games on the ps3 and I couldn\'t wait for Live 08. But now looking back maybe I should have. Live is gonna be more money but if you are looking for a real NBA game hold yourself back for it. I promise it is gonna be better than this. (I have just played the demo and the graphics are 10x better than this) They always have been... Read review

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Advantages: Friendly and adaptive menuing and improved EZ startup networking and improved multimedia and recording support.
Disadvantages: Driver support, excessive system requirements compared to Win9x and Win2k.

...into another problem area. A lot of products you use with a PC have limited functionality support in Win2k and NT4 compared to using them with the Win9x support files. And since XP is essentially Win2k Pro Mk II, the same factor seems to end up being the case. And that is where the big issue arrives. Around 17% of uk machines are considered XP ready by the people at MS. Now maybe i'm missing out on something here, but thats not a totally inspiring setting for the Home Edition really. This does, indeed, increase the TCO if you do happen to have pre-PII/Celeron/K7 based systems, since most of the later ones do have some degree of hardware suitability for XP. And MS have generally issued an 'evolve or die' ultimatum as a result. So, 'evolve or die' means that in practise, XP is best got hold of with a new machine, where compatibility and driver... Read review

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Advantages: Deliver speed
Disadvantages: Easy to get hot

.... Then I wrote down some components I had to buy. I had to buy a mainboard, a processor and an atx casing. These three components could be said to be the core of creating my dream PC. I visited some sites to see the results of bench-marking. I paid a serious attention at the mainboard bench-marking results. After 3 days of watching the results, I had found my choice. Decision Finally, now I have an AMD Athlon 1.33 Ghz plugged on a Socket A mainboard (K7S5A, 2 DDR + 2 SDR) board. I choose this board from ECS (EliteGroup) as it has been proved by some bench-markers that the board delivers stability and high performance with low price. I purchased the board just USD71. Instead of the low price, I still can use my old SDRAM on this board. Then I choose AMD 1.33 with no real technical reasons, but just as the ‘competitive price’ compared... Read review

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Advantages: Low price, superior speed
Disadvantages: None

...With Athlon AMD, at last, start make fast and stable processor. Athlon is really sped demon! I use my Athlon 550 MHZ on ASUS K7M motherboard for more than 2 monthes, and at first time i was really suprised - I can work with Photoshop filter and see an MPEG4 video with good fps AT ONCE! Athlon works stable in all applications - even in Win 98 and 2000. Games, which support AMD 3DNow! instructions (exist in Microsoft DirectX7), also work faster. I play in NFS5 and Unreal Tournament (with TNT2 M64 and 64 MB RAM) with 1024x768 - quality of picture is superior!!! Also price is lower than PIII CPU with same frequency. So, the only disadvantage is insufficient quantity of motherboards for this CPU, but all of this mainboards maded by famous manufacturers. I definitely reccomend it for all users, who want fast and stable work in any... Read review

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