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ECS P5SD-B+ Super 7 Motherboard
Reviewed by Jackie Lee Choon Yau (08/09/98)

Motherboard Specifications

Processor

  • Intel Pentium® Processor P54C/P55C
  • AMD K5/K6/K6 3D
  • IBM / Cyrix 6x86/6x86L/M2
  • IDT C6 Series WinChip

Chipset

  • VIA MVP3 AGPset (CE Revision)
  • PCB Rev 1.0
  • BIOS Ver 1.1

Cache memory

  • 512 KB pipeline burst  L2 cache onboard

System Memory

  • 2 x 168-pin 3.3v DIMM sockets support
  • 2 x 72-pin SIMM sockets support
  • Supports 60/66/68/75/83/90/95/100/112 MHz System Clock Speed Setting
  • Supports 1.5-5.5 Multiplier Setting

PCI IDE

  • 2 X PCI Bus Master UDMA/33 IDE ports (up to 4 ATAPI Devices)
  • Supports for PIO Mode 3, 4, UDMA/33 IDE & ATAPI CD-ROM

I/O Interface

  • 1x floppy port (360KB-2.88MB)
  • 2x serial ports (16550 high-speed)
  • 1x parallel port (SPP/EPP/ECP)
  • PS/2 Keyboard
  • PS/2 Mouse
  • 2x USB

Expansion slot

  • 4 x PCI 32-bit slots, PCI 2.1 compliant
  • 2 x ISA 16-bit slots
  • 1x AGP slot

Power Management

  • Power On by LAN, RTC Alarm, Modem Ring & Soft-Power Switch
  • Power Off by Windows® 98 Shut down & Soft-Power Switch

Form Factor

  • 2/3 Baby AT Form Factor
  • Supports Dual Power Supply ATX / AT
  • Fits in Regular AT Case

BIOS

  • Award PnP BIOS

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Introduction

ECS P5SD-B , this board should be very familiar to you as it is one of the 1st 100 Mhz AGP Socket 7 Motherboards available in Singapore. Elitegroup using the SIS chipset has enable us to take a peek at what kind of performance to expect when zooming at 100 Mhz using a socket 7 chip. But I guess they did not give up in their R&D into the up coming Super 7 technology and here it is. The VIA MVP3 based motherboard is the wonderful result. The ECS P5SD-B+ is bornt. For a drift of what's to follow, I will say that the best setting to run your AMD K6-2 300 Mhz or 333 Mhz is at 112 Mhz x 3 = 336 Mhz. Read further!

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The Good

The ECS P5SD-B+ supports a maximum of 512 MB of memory with its 2 DIMMs slots and 2 SIMMs slots with ECC support. This dual power supply type motherboard is small enough for all normal casing and even a micro-ATX format case. Despite of the small in size, the board still contains all the standard features like 1/4/2 AGP/PCI/ISA Slots.

In addition, there is also an avenue for users who still wants to use their old PC 66 SDRAMs. The JP9, JP10 on the mainboard allows the DRAMs to sync with either the CPU Clock or the AGP Clock. However the same settings must be observed on JP 9 and JP 10 in order to work if not system will hang.

Other than the rams issue, the Elitegroup R&D has also done their homework from the viewing in the shoes of the end-users. ECS P5SD-B+ is designed with to fit almost all wants. There is a setting to set the CPU I/O Voltage @ JP 13 to set either 3.3 V or 3.52 V which is very important in stabilizing the system when subjected under overclocked environment @ increasing multipliers.or bus speed. Furthermore, this board also allows users to set their desired voltages in 0.1 V intervals from 2.0 V - 3.5 V.

Another good point is also the fact that this board support dual power supply. This could save you another S$100 at least for a ATX Power Casing. ECS P5SD-B+ using high grade SRAMs rated at 5 ns to maintain stable data buffer from the CPU.

The next good point is actually more for the Singapore context. The price of this motherboard is at a very affordable S$ 159 dated 05 September 1998. Very competitive indeed.

The final good point is the test of the motherboard with the fact that this board that I have received to run rock stable at 112 Mhz x 3 = 336 Mhz on both the AMD K6-2 300 Mhz and 333 Mhz and what's the best part is that I managed to run 112 Mhz x 3.5 = 392 Mhz. See below !

The Test

Test Configuration

Processor(s): AMD K6-2 300, 333, 350 Mhz*
RAM: 64 MB Hyundai PC100 SDRAM DIMMs
Hard Drive(s): Quantum SE 2.1 GB
Video Card(s): Canopus Total3D 128V 4MB 1.54B
Bus Master Drivers: Windows 98 Bus Mastering Drivers
Video Drivers: 4.10.01.0250-1.30.05
Operation System(s): Windows 98 (build 4.10.1998)
Software(s) : Direct X Version 6.0

Wintune 98 Result for K6-2 300 Mhz @ 3 x 100 Mhz

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@300 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 795.6493 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 346.7219 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 67.60229 MPixels/s
Direct3D 79.74031 MPixels/s
OpenGL 62.14874 MPixels/s
Memory 510.9356 MB/s
Cached Disk 46.88052 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.196219 MB/s

Wintune 98 Result for K6-2 300 / 333 Mhz @ 3 x 112 Mhz

(Recommended Setting for AMD K6-2 300 Mhz)

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@334 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 889.1096 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 386.2466 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 72.86232 MPixels/s
Direct3D 83.06587 MPixels/s
OpenGL 63.93391 MPixels/s
Memory 572.0135 MB/s
Cached Disk 53.691 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.074854 MB/s

Wintune 98 Result for K6-2 300/333/350Mhz @ 3.5 x 100 Mhz

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@334 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 911.4008 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 400.5465 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 73.36405 MPixels/s
Direct3D 79.13942 MPixels/s
OpenGL 63.12158 MPixels/s
Memory 573.6048 MB/s
Cached Disk 51.51627 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.097614 MB/s

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 333 / 350 Mhz @ 4 x 90 Mhz

(Recommended Setting for AMD K6-2 333 Mhz)

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@359 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 938.0224 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 414.0416 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 66.34047 MPixels/s
Direct3D 77.64576 MPixels/s
OpenGL 59.51451 MPixels/s
Memory 583.0336 MB/s
Cached Disk 48.72286 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.114347 MB/s

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 333 / 350 Mhz @ 4.5 x 83 Mhz

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@373 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 963.5997 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 429.6633 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 63.87348 MPixels/s
Direct3D 76.26485 MPixels/s
OpenGL 60.23907 MPixels/s
Memory 593.8746 MB/s
Cached Disk 46.71239 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.226269 MB/s

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 350 Mhz @ 3.5 x 112 Mhz

CPU (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@391 MHz
Video Board Canopus Total3D 128V
Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel
RAM 64 MB
OS Windows 98 4.10.1998
Area Tested Value
CPU Integer 1027.566 MIPS
CPU Floating Point 450.7057 MFLOPS
Video(2D) 80.3041 MPixels/s
Direct3D 83.83698 MPixels/s
OpenGL 64.84975 MPixels/s
Memory 644.8094 MB/s
Cached Disk 58.78302 MB/s
Uncached Disk 2.223256 MB/s

As you might have observed that the settings for AMD K6-2 350 Mhz @ 392 Mhz for this board has made AMD K6-2 break the 1000 MIPS barrier. For a more details, please read on.

Settings K6-2 300 Mhz K6-2 333 Mhz K6-2 350 Mhz
300 @ 3 x 100 Mhz Rock Stable Underclock??!! Underclock??!!
336 @ 3 x 112 Mhz Rock Stable* @ 2.3V Rock Stable Rock Stable
350 @ 3.5 x 100 Mhz Rock Stable* @ 2.3V Rock Stable Rock Stable
360 @ 4 x 90 Mhz Hang @ Win 98 Rock Stable* @ 2.3V Rock Stable* @ 2.3 V
375 @ 4.5 x 83 Mhz No Display Rock Stable* @ 2.3V Rock Stable* @ 2.3V
392 @ 3.5 x 115 Mhz No Display No Display Rock Stable* @ 2.4V
400 @ 4.0 x 100 Mhz No Display No Display Ram Counter

Default using Core Voltage 2.2 V and I/O Voltage 3.3V

* means CPU I/O Voltage @ JP 13 to set to 3.52 V

Results 300 336 350 360 375 392*
MIPS 796 889 911 938 964 1028
Memory Speed 511 572 574 583 594 645
Cached Disk 47 54 52 49 47 59
Norton SI V3.0.3 114.2 132.3 123.4 126.1 125.1 148.9

Norton SI V3.0.3 Index = 140.2 for a Intel Pentium II 300 Mhz

Therefore if you are running Office Applications for your system, I would recommend that you use the higher CPU Processor Speed Setting for the higher Floating Point Calculations and Memory Speed.

As for the performance on 3D Gaming, I decided to run the Quake 2 Timedemos AMD Bulid V3.17 (3DNow! OpenGL) @ 640 x 480 and compare the Wintune Direct3D and OpenGL results for you.

Results 300 336* 350 360 375 392*
DEMO1 / fps 27.6 30.9 30.3 29.4 29.0 32.7
DEMO2 / fps 27.1 29.5 29.3 28.5 28.1 31.8
CRUSHER / fps 16.4 18.3 18.0 17.3 16.7 20.2
Direct3D / MP/s 79.7 83.1 79.1 77.6 76.3 83.8
Open GL / MP/s 62.1 63.9 63.1 59.5 60.2 64.8

The above shows the performance of 112 FSB on a Super7 motherboard.  Please also note that to run this board at a high of 112 Mhz FSB requires very good and reliable PC 100 SDRAMs.  Therefore, the best gaming setting is actually using the 336 Mhz for 300/333 CPUs and 392 Mhz setting for the 350 Mhz.

I would say that the recommended setting for AMD K6-2 300 Mhz and 333 Mhz would be 112 Mhz x 3 = 336 Mhz and the recommended setting for AMD K6-2 350 Mhz would be of course 112 x 3.5 Mhz = 392 Mhz   In short, the ECS P5SD-B+ offers you with the flexibility of settings and CPUs to suit your home computing needs; be it Office applications or Gaming.

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The Bad

The first most observable imperfection is the lack of DIMMs slots. With only 64 MB  PC100 SDRAMs, the maximum is only 128 MB. Please also note that one cannot install a combinations of DIMMs and SIMMs. In another words, no mixing of DIMMs and SIMMs for this board.

The next bad point is perhaps the fact that there are too many jumpers to configure before setting the board on go. This is actually a good point to overclockers but a bad point to novice system assemblers. For just the Bus speed setting, the voltage core setting and the multiplier setting, there are 16 jumpers to set. Phew !

The final bad point is actually not a problem to the board itself but to the VIA MVP3 Chip. Even though the board uses the latest CE version, it is still necessary for users to download at least two files from VIA Website @ www.via.com.tw

The two files are : -

1)  VIA AGP driver ver. 2.9

2) VIA IrQ Routing Driver ver. 1.1

The Procedure is as such : (Extracted from VIA Website for your convenience)

  There are four important steps to follow:
  1) Go into BIOS setup and enable USB
  2) Install Win98 on your system
  3) Download and install the VIA IrQ routing miniport driver from our driver page
  4) Download and install the VIA AGP driver from our driver page (for MVP3 & VP3 chipsets only)

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Conclusion

The P5SD-B+ is an overall winner in price for performance. Its ability to support stable 112 Mhz FSB and flexibility to run the coming AMD K6-2 350 Mhz and higher should edge you closer into getting one for yourself. If you are having a budget constraint (due to economic crisis .....hee hee |8-)) and hope to get a very good and stable performer, I would certainly have no hold back to recommend this motherboard to you. This is the board I would recommend to you if you are buying any AMD K6-2 CPUs.I am still running 112Mhz x 3.5 on a AMD K6-2 350 Mhz as I am typing this review. I would have given my 1st Five Star Rating to this board if it has one more DIMMs slot and a 120 Mhz FSB option. By the way, the official distributor of ECS products in Singapore is Fuwell @ Sim Lim Square.

 


MOTHERBOARD RATING

Overall Rating (Out of a maximum of 5 Star)

Installation ****
Performance ****
Price *****
Overclockability ****
Material Quality ****
Stability *****
Overall Rating ****1/2

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