ECS 755-A2: Performance and Value for the Athlon 64

Final Words

Sometimes, reviews just make us hungry for more. The SiS 755 Reference Board review was that type of review. As impressed as we and others were with the performance and features of the 755 chipset, we were anxious to see if manufacturers would actually deliver on the promise of the SiS 755 chipset. ECS delivered the first production motherboard based on the SiS 755 chipset with the ECS 755-A. Frankly, when we first looked at the 755-A, we wondered if we had jumped the gun in naming the SiS 755 the best current Athlon 64 chipset. While the board was stable, the performance was not in the same league with the SiS 755 Reference Board.

ECS is now delivering the second production 755 board, the ECS 755-A2. We commend ECS for their work on the A2 because Revision A2 is very comparable in performance to the SiS 755 Reference Board, and a big improvement over the Revision A board. The 755-A2 is also a great value, which makes it a good choice with the now lower-priced 3000+ and 3200+ Athlon 64 processors that have materialized since our SiS 755 review.

The 755-A2 also proves that the SiS 755 family has the potential to be a very good overclocking chipset just as we are starting to see more and more Athlon 64 processors with greater headroom. Without vCore and with very limited FSB and vDIMM adjustments, we were still able to overclock the 755-A2 to the highest levels that we have reached with a 3200+. This only makes us even more curious about where you could take the 755-A2 with a better selection of options for the Computer Enthusiast. We have asked ECS to consider including additional options in their BIOS, and we will report any improvements made by ECS. However, the extended capabilities of the SiS 755 chipset may not really be known until Asus ships the SiS 755 board that we had seen in the Asus roadmaps at CES.

Despite our wish list and druthers, the ECS 755-A2 is a solid choice for an Athlon 64 motherboard. It is very fast and has all the great options available on the SiS964 South Bridge - like SATA RAID, 8 USB ports, and 10/100 LAN. It is an excellent overclocker that handles our best memory at 2-2-2-6 timings at DDR400. We also confirmed that the memory is very capable of running beyond DDR400 on the A2 revision. At a setting of 222 (888 Hypertransport), our memory was running at DDR444. All of this in an Athlon 64 board that likely will be selling at one of the lowest prices of any Socket 754 board. In the end, this adds up to real value in our book.

We are now completing a system review of a new Athlon 64 gaming system. This system uses the 755-A2 motherboard with an Athlon 64 3400+ and a 240GB SATA RAID array running on the SiS 964 RAID controller. If you like what you see with the SiS 755 on the ECS 755-A2, then be on the lookout for the upcoming Titan 64 gaming system review. You will be able to see how this board performs when decked out with some of the fastest options available for a Socket 754 system.