This may help people wanting to use DDR with ECS K7S5A

[nb321]

Hi,

In searching through OCW . com web forums I came accross a possible solution to DDR memory not working with the ECS K7S5A motherboard. Somenone posted a message about how they could not get ddr memory to work with their K7S5A board, for some reason the person decided to take out their Creative Modemblaster modem. After that was done the thier computer booted right up with the ddr memory.

I had the same problem with my K7S5A not working with ddr, so I tried taking my Creative modem out and the computer booted up too with ddr!

This may not be a solution for other people but it is a starting point.

[dunbar]

Creative has, in the past year, had some interesting issues with VIA PCI chipsets. Creative is/was using PCI 'bus parking' while older VIA chipsets got designed based on bad info about how to implement bus parking. Newer chipsets were designed correctly.

Any chance that the ECS mobo uses older via chipsets? I posted about this many months ago.... lemme see if I can dig up a link about it, while I do that, you figure out what chipset is used on the ECS K7S5A mobo. brb.

[dunbar]

My oops: the issue I was thinking is related to soundcards... you said modem issue, so probably not the same issue. Maybe but probably not.

[Peter M]

dunbar, close, but not true. Bus parking is and has ever been an OPTIONAL feature of the PCI specification. Earlier VIA chipsets didn't implement it at all (and were perfectly PCI compliant in so doing), but some Creative chips relied on it being present.
VIA later (with the 8235) caved in and implemented bus parking, to make the users happy.
Creative, on the other hand, has the official position of "it works on Intel chipsets, we don't give a sh*t about the others" (my paraphrase).

I wouldn't expect Creative's modem chips to behave any better. Avoid. There's plenty of other - and less ignorant - fish in the pond.

[Eladijaz]

Of course, just to get it clear, the K7S5A uses the SiS 735 unified chipset (north and south bridges as one), but it is good to run it with the more recent bioses as it too has some PCI discrepencies - which cause problems with, how did you guess?:- Creative cards ...
Regards,
Elad.

[Peter M]

No. No. No. It's the Creative cards where the PCI quirks are, not the VIA or SiS chipsets. Unlike on the former, the SiS chipsets do NOT allow working around those bugs - and on VIA chipsets, the workaround comes at the cost of a noticeable performance loss on PCI.
Just don't put that Creative stuff into your new builds.

[Eladijaz]

Yes. Yes. Yes. I agree with the point you are making about VIA and Creative Peter, but there is also something going on with certain BIOS versions of the SiS 735 which causes anomolous sounds and glitches when used with creative sound cards. I am saying that later BIOS versions helped to alleviate or sometimes even solve these glitches altogether.
I also find your suggestion that Creative is ignorant interesting ... I would say they are simply more interested in marketing than compatability ... they know which will continue to bring in the $$$.
Kindest of regards,
Elad.

[Peter M]

Early BIOSes of K7S5A did show problems with the onboard sound not getting enough share of the system bandwidth. Creative sound cards, even when paired with mainboards that happen to work despite the card's PCI bug, create lots of PCI bus traffic even when completely idle - and that causes its share of bandwidth limitation symptoms as well.
There are other fish in the pond, with better implementation, better sound quality, and better customer care.