AMD / Intel Hybrid Motherboard 151
batgirl writes "ECS has taken advantage of their recent merger with PC Chips and released an interesting take on motherboards. Using the highly portable SiS chipsets, they were able to create a motherboard that supports all kinds of processors across all platforms. The PF88 starts as an Intel socket 775 motherboard, but different expansion cards can be purchased to add support for everything from a Socket 939 Athlon64 to a Socket 479 Pentium-M. The price is right, and performance is as good as can be expected. But how many people would make use of this?"
Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know what kind of reputation PCCHIPS and SiS have now, but I have 2 500Mhz PCCHIPS motherboards and, I believe, SiS chips for integrated extras like sound. Working with them, under Windows or Linux, was such a horrid experience, it'll take years of hearing every geek I meet telling me their work is great before I ever try anything with either of those names on it again. I remember having problems trying 3rd party parallel cables with their boards and not getting anything to work. When I Googled for info, I found that I was just one of many people with that same problem. I spent 3-5 years developing a unique software system on computers using their boards. Once I got Linux running, I stopped upgrading all packages because those boards are so flakey.
Twice bitten, everafterwards shy.
PC Chips will never have my trust (Score:5, Informative)
Screw this company, even if it has somehow evolved.
Re:OS Support? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:3, Informative)
Can't really say that anything is really bad over here, i know the sis graphics sucks, but since this is a work laptop and no gaming machine it doesnt really matter (i knew the lack of graphic performance on purchase already, there had to be something that made this thing that cheap
Other than that, it works just ok, no weird "sis bugs" anywhere to see, the sound is ok for a laptop (even in cpu up/down throttling situations mplayer plays without glitches). I run Ubuntu 5.04 here, kernerl 2.6.12-5. Rock solid (i'm lying now, i crashed once, but that was a ndiswrapper bug). writing a cd or dvd with the dual layer dvd writer doesnt suck the whole perfomance out of the machine (old sis chipsets had serious concurrency issues), usb bus seems ok, and the broadcom wifi works also fine (i'm currently in my bed watching the chine F1 grand prix).
However, from the past i must agree with you that i have seen some veeeryy bad chipsets from sis and pcchips too. But recently sis has evolved pretty well and still maintained the keep the prices low.
I wish SiS would be more linux friendly and release a graphics driver or the specifications for their sis760 integrated graphics chip. the 3000+ cpu on my laptop can make compensations for the usual graphics stuff instead of the chip own features but the 3d performance is just slow as hell since the dri project of linux cant handle this chip yet (whereas under windows i can run enemy territory and colin mcrae rally 3).
Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:5, Informative)
I do have a more recent PCChips board, and it is not as bad. A merger with ECS doesn't bolster my confidence in them, though my experience with ECS is limited.
For now I stick to the mid-range Asus, Abit and BioStars and have had good luck.
Re:PC Chips will never have my trust (Score:3, Informative)
Some years ago, I owned a retail computer store - about 5 employees, you know the dig. Anyway, I sold tons of PC-Chips MB571 motherboards. They used socket 7, so anything fom Pentium-75 up thru AMD K6-2 450 was supported. They were incredibly reliable - I had maybe 3% bad - and made a good, cheap upgrade board for people's computers.
It was common for me to take a used 486, slap in a 571 MB, upgrade the RAM, and sell it as a "refurbished" computer. Funny enough, I had the LEAST problems with Windows and drivers with those boards, too.
But then, they "upgraded" to the 571 LMR, and it was horrid. Bad driver problems, flakey, crashed alot, etc. That was one of several bad turns that led to me selling out and going into full-time Linux and freelance software engineering as a consultant. (Where I continue to this day quite happily!)
Anyway, I can see that it's quite possible that PC-Chips deserves a bad rap, and make no mistake - they aren't a "high end" board manufacturer, but to this day I have 4 systems running on PC-Chips motherboards, two of them production servers, with great uptimes, decent performance, and good reliability, and two others have been working daily for years!
Has been done before... (Score:2, Informative)
Compaq used same approach in:
The only cheap and working solutions were the cpu converter sockets, f.ex. from a Pentium II slot to Pentium III socket.
Recent Merger?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:3, Informative)
The other brands you mention are fine as well. I've had great luck with BioStar (used two of their boards in my personal machines for several years), my experience with Abit has been a bit mixed, and Asus boards are solid, but I find they tend to be overpriced compared to similar boards from other "top tier" manufacturers. IE: The A8N-E in the system I'm typing this on has fewer features and a poorer layout than boards that cost $15-20 less from makes like Gigabyte, ABit, even MSI (who I find are even more overpriced) etc.
Either way, I'm definitely a big believer in going with what works well for you, just thought I'd give my opinion as someone who deals with a bit more volume than most slashdotters do.
Re:Useful to who? (Score:1, Informative)
ANANDTECH: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=1952 [anandtech.com]
"After comparing it to other chipsets on the market, we awarded the SiS 755 our Editor's Choice award for the best Athlon 64 chipset."
I'd pick Sis 755 chipset over others after trying it out too. Not having to install drivers from a different CD to recognize SATA is just one reason not even mentioned in the comparison resulting in Editor's choice.
As for ECS, they've been known in the past as the "cheapest" and I've heard bad things about their quality online, but now, even companies like Abit are outsourcing to ECS. If you look into ECS, you'd be surprised at how many other mobo companies are using them to manufacture their boards.
And if you look at reviews of their SiS 755 board, ECS 755-A2, you'll see that it gets very high marks in performance, layout, and quality. Just google and find out for yourself instead of rehashing stale news of prior decades. For example, the ECS 755-A2 mobo got noticed for using 3-stage voltage regulators while the more expensive mobos only used 2-stage.
When people bring up Linux today, you don't trash it because you had driver compatibility problems with Slackware 0.9 on your i486 during the 1990's do you?
Cheap components... (Score:2, Informative)