It´s not just you and it´s not just nowadays. We used to have heeps of trouble back then in my former company when we bought ECS boards - both SIS and VIA - for a period of time. Lots of them died, overheated, became increasingly unstable, had massive compatibility issues with standard hardware components and failed again and again. Note that this was not even related to the cpacitor plague that kicked in some years later.
The low prices were tempting, but in the long run you lost.
I suppose the whole design was inferior, the components low quality and the north- and southbridges just second rate quality or buggy revisions that other manufacturers refused to buy.
And it was often issues like yours. RAM didn´t work, then it worked, the next day it wouldn´t.
This doesn´t mean there are no exceptions to be found. Some, or even many models are hasslefree and have been running for years flawlessly. But you had to be very careful and at the date of purchase it was unknown if it would turn out to be a mistake.

That's true, ECS always made cheap stuff, but it's the first time I have so many problems, I used some ECS boards for pentium 4 and despite them being cheap, the bios sucks, also the old ecs website was a mess, they never failed me.
Unlucky this particular motherboard model isn't easy to find, that's why I'm trying to make it work with so much effort.

Is there a jumper setting to change between the two ram formats?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-04-22, 12:56:

Is there a jumper setting to change between the two ram formats?

No there isn't

Edit: Now it works, but with ddr and pentium 3 1000, i'm going to do all the tests. Where could be the problem with sdram? Maybe some cold solder joints?
Switched to SDRAM and it doesn't work, I tried 10 different sticks, no way it boots.
I'm also disappointed from the performance, in some tests it's great in others it's slower than bx build with the same cpu.

Results:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-04-22, 10:36:

Anyone else had issues with switching from ddr to sdr?

I had no problems with SDR as well as DDR at least whitout overclocking. SDR was slower though 😉

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-04-22, 13:15:

I'm also disappointed from the performance, in some tests it's great in others it's slower than bx build with the same cpu.

What GPU drivers are you using? Try 44.03 - they gave me the best results
Make sure you also have SiS GART 1.07 installed 😀 I assume you run it on Windows 98/ME?

What I found really, really strange with this mobo was that one particular RAM gave me better performance, the rest was usually slower.

VooDooMan wrote on 2021-04-23, 07:50:

I had no problems with SDR as well as DDR at least whitout overclocking. SDR was slower though ;) […]
Show full quote

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-04-22, 10:36:

Anyone else had issues with switching from ddr to sdr?

I had no problems with SDR as well as DDR at least whitout overclocking. SDR was slower though 😉

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-04-22, 13:15:

I'm also disappointed from the performance, in some tests it's great in others it's slower than bx build with the same cpu.

What GPU drivers are you using? Try 44.03 - they gave me the best results
Make sure you also have SiS GART 1.07 installed 😀 I assume you run it on Windows 98/ME?

What I found really, really strange with this mobo was that one particular RAM gave me better performance, the rest was usually slower.

Indeed with sdr is slower, I wanted to compare the performance difference between sdr and ddr. I love to do such comparisons 😁
Probably something is wrong with my motherboard.
I'm using a Geforce 2 ti 64mb with detonator_3_w9x-805, on windows 98 SE.
Thank you for the tip, I was using agp121 and R204a. I'm going to clean install windows 98 and use the agp driver you adviced.
Ram settings are the fastest I was able to set on the bios, i'm using a 7ns ddr rated chips, they should be fine with tightest settings at 133mhz.

I redid the tests, results improved a bit.

Can You compare these motherboards @100MHz FSB? At 133MHz BX boards have overclocked AGP and i wonder if it have any impact on the results 😀

BigDaddyM wrote on 2021-04-23, 11:43:

Can You compare these motherboards @100MHz FSB? At 133MHz BX boards have overclocked AGP and i wonder if it have any impact on the results 😀

I has impact for sure, but I'm comparing the memory results (where agp frequency has no impact) they are sometimes lower than BX, I wonder if it is something wrong with my motherboard.
Those are the results with Sandra 99 about memory:

Sadly memory bandwidth seems on par with VooDooMan results (maybe because I used the tightest timings I was able to set in the bios), but the results on gaming aren't stunning.

Edit: HOLD ON, now it works with sdram too 😐

Well now the mainboard works with both SDR and DDR, I do know, maybe it has a non working sdram slot? Or it is picky... since i'm going to compare this motherboard with others, I will do this in another topic.

Edit: memory results with sdr (tightest timings as always):

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-04-23, 12:15:

I wonder if it is something wrong with my motherboard.

It's strange that your results aren't on pair with IntelBX, they should be even better in some cases... maybe rev 1.5 was not as fast as 1.6 or there is something wrong wiht your mobo or configuration...

I am trying to get another motherboard with rev 1.6 for some serious modifications but I am unlucky 🙁

This one arrived yesterday but it's totally DEAD! I am surprised that all the caps are OK... but there is no post nontheless 🙁 The chipset gets very very hot - probably damaged... ehhh...

It's a pity because seems in great condition. Maybe there is a short circuit? That's why the chipset become so hot?
Do you have a debug card?
How would you like to modify it?

I am not into electronics... So I won't be able to identify the problem... BUT I am going to send it to that guy who is willing to modify it - maybe he will be able to bring it back to life.

Well, I am still hoping that it is possible to make this mobo work stable at 166 MHz with Tualatins, and I finally have found somebody who will do his best to achieve that 😀
He will also try to completely modify the BIOS so that it is possible to overclock the CPU from BIOS without that CMOStool trick. I am tired of searching for that "legendary custom BIOS' it seems to be just a myth...

BTW has anyone here got the boardview / scheme for this motherboard?

Wow that's a great news! Do you think that the problem lies in the motherboard to do not achieve the 166mhz bus?
I think it may be the cpus, let's hope the guy will succeed with the bios and mobo rework.
Keep us updated, please.

Some progress is being made 😉

After many failures and countless hours of experimenting I was finally able to run this ECS P6S5AT with SiS 635T chipset at 166 MHz FSB with Tualatin 512kb 😀

Now the FASTEST Socket 370 motherboard is EVEN FASTER 😁

At this point I’m gonna show you how it performs with PIII-S 1133 MHz, Tualatin core, 512kb (SL6BX).
The rest of the specs are as usual:
- Win98SE mainly
- GeForce 4 Ti 4600, GeForce 5 FX 5950 Ultra, and some GeForce 6800GT(Windows XP)!
- CPU clock = 1577 MHz!!! (13 % more than the original SL6BY 1400 MHz)
- DDR RAM Timings only 2,5-2-2-6 with 1GB GoodRam stick.

Here are the results from Everest MemoryTest:

When we compare those results with the original PIII 1400 MHz at 133 FSB we can see that the latency dropped from 90,6 to 79,4. That gives us 14 % gain. Read, Write and Copy are around 25 % better 😀

In SiSoft Sandra we can see 24 %) gain from the previous results.

In the rest of the tests we can see around 13-19 & gain in performance:

Let's check out the gaming performance 😉

Quake III
GeForce 4 ti 4600:
- from 197,2 FPS to 213,2 FPS (8% gain) - high res.
- from 227,2 FPS to 264,7 FPS (17% gain) - low res.

5950 Ultra gave me 16 % more FPSes In low res, and 12 % more in hihg res.

Serious Sam (OpenGL):

GeForce Ti 4600 gives 6% gain (60,2 to 64,1 FPS) in high res,
GeForce 5 FX 5950 ultra gives us phoenomenal 22 % gain in performance (from 64,8 FPS to 79,2 FPS!)

Here is a nice score that I got on GeForce 6800 GT:

It's still a work In progress project so I can’t share all the details now. There is lots to be done with DDR timings. I have to lower them to cl 2-2-2-5 and the results should be much better 😉

Here are my stupid nicknames for the following configurations so that it is easier to refer to given frequencies.

Pentium III-S 1,4 (SL6BY) @ 133 FSB = 1400 MHz - TualKing

Pentium III-S 1,26 (SL6BW) @ 166 FSB = 1411 MHz - TualSlave

Pentium III-S 1,4 (SL6BY) @ 150 FSB = 1575 MHz - TualQueen

Pentium III-S 1,13 (SL6BX) @ 166 FSB = 1577 MHz - TualWarrior

Pentium III-S 1,4 (SL6BY) @ 166 FSB = 1743 MHz - TualGOD!

In most cases those speed are reachable but there is one that I would love to achieve:
Pentium III-S 1,13 (SL6BW) @ 200 FSB = 1750 MHz - TualBeast!

In the next post I will try to compare those results with the AMD AthlonXP equivalent 😉

Great results, congratulations!

Do you have any news about the modified bios, any progress has been made?

Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-09-17, 08:13:

Great results, congratulations!

Do you have any news about the modified bios, any progress has been made?

Unfortunatelly, BIOS is not ready yet... and it will be VERY hard to do ANYTHING about it without the DataSheet for this mobo, or SiS 635T specification – those documents seem to be lost or they have never been made to the public...

Let’s move on with the comparison:

Below on the left you can see the results from ECS P6S5AT (SiS635T) Vs. ECS K7S5A(SiS735) on the right – The conditions are almost always the same. The chipsets are very similar, the rest is as usual: Win 98SE, DX8.1, RAM ten sam GoodRam 1 GHZ 2,5-2-2-6. The only thing that is really different is the FSB speed. It was impossible for me to get that crappy ECS K7S5A working at 166 MHz...

On the Intel side we’ve got: PIII-S SL6BX: 166 x13,5 = 1577 MHz (for sale from July2001?)
on the AMD side: Athlon XP 2400 +: 133 x15 = 2000MHz (for sale from August 2002?)

Pentium has higher FSB and twice as much cache, AtlhonXP has lower FSB and half the cache, but is clocked higher by 423 MHz! I wanted to set this Athlon at 166 MHz so that the conditions were more similar, but this board somehow does not accept it. All the results presented here were tested with the GeForce Ti 4600 graphics card (44.03 drivers)

AMD's performance in Everest definitely outperforms Intel in almost every respect except for memory latency.

In SiSoft Sandra Athlon beats Pentium again but the difference is a bit smaller in some instances:

PCMark 2002 is already more favorable to Intel but In the CPU Score PIII losts totally. In the Memory Score the result is almost identical, while Intel is leading in the HDD score.

3D Mark 99 produced very similar GPU results - 22 point difference. But AMD's CPU score wiped away Intel ...

Intel dominated AMD slightly in the 3D Mark 2000 by 92 points 😉

In 3D Mark 2001se the difference in results is merely 100 points so it’s a small thing 😉

Now, let’s check which one is better In games 😀

In Quake III, both in low and high resolution, Intel wins….(in the low res Pentium gets 14 frames more and in the high res. It scores 6.1 frames more) In Serious Sam, however, Thoroughbred wins the fight by 1.6 frames in 640x480 and 3.7 frames in high resolution. What is more interesting is that with a more powerful graphics cards such as the GeForce 6800 GT, the results were better for Intel 😀

Intel with Gf6800 GT at default clocks - 13472 points, AMD - 13435 points

The conclusion is that the Intel PIII 1266 MHz overclocked to 166 MHz bus (CPU clock - 1577 MHz - "TualWarrior") is more or less the equivalent of the Athlon XP2400 + 😉

I dare to say that Tualking 1.4 GHz overclocked to 166 MHz (1743 MHz - "TualGOD") will be able to compete with Barton 2500+ and maybe even 2600+ on “fair” conditions ;]

In the attacked file, you can compare the results described above with many differnet platforms. There are lots of results but I won’t get into details just take a look and see yourself which one is better. Of course it is unfair to compare results on a 2001 motherboard with a 2003 mobo, so it will always be unclear which CPU is better. A lot depends on the application.
Nevertheless I think that Overclocked Tualatin on a SiS635T mothearboard has a huge potential 😀

Next step is to play with TUALGOD!!! (SL6BY at 166FSB = 1750 MHz) HOW FAST DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE? 😁

Wow, judging by all those comments I can see that the interest is huuuuge 😜 😁 So I’m not gonna keep you waiting for an update 😉

Here’s how the fastest single socket 370 board runs with the best Tualatin CPU at 166 MHz, for the first time in the history:

Booting + 2 games with GeForce 4600 and WIN98SE :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2K43KxSHsI

MemoryTest86 Raport + BIOS settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0BbW4iA__8

Doom III benchamrk on Windows XP with 6800GT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02x8L9u2kLk

30 minutes of gameplay, 2003-2005 era games (winXP and 6800GT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHhYhPDT70U

STALKER on very high setting:
https://youtu.be/VoE6Y37pmd8

Before we go on with DDR results you can check the results with SDR memory:

Finalny WINDOWS 98SE and DDR memory!!!:

GeForce 4 Ti 4600:

FX 5950 ULTRA:

GeForce 6800GT win98SE:

small OC:

Test results with GeForce 6800 GT on WindowsXP
















Some of my best records on this board with overclocked GeForce 6800GT:











I’m not gonna share you the secret how to run this board at 166 MHz with a Tualatin CPU at this point, let’s just wait some time and next year you gonna see this baby run at 200 MHz 😁


If you are interested you can take a look at this New project releted to this mobo, where I compare it with other chipsets at 166 MHz 😉
Project "TualGOD": Pentium III-S 1,4 GHz @ 166 FSB = 1750 MHz - 5 chipsets comparison

Just a small update!

I've managed to run a different batch of that ECS P6S5AT at 166 MHz and Tualatin at CL2! (2-2-2-6 exactly) but there are some bad side effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRKR7M4D408
You can see lots of artifacts. When I switch to CL 2,5 the problem is gone...
I think that CL2 is a chipset limitation that cannot be solved. Bear in mind that we are talking here about a motherboard from 2001 and the DDR333 became a standard in the middle of 2002 I think - correct me If I am wrong....

So.... perhaps CL 2,5-2-2-6/5 is the maximum this mobo/chipset can take. I will try to expermient with different RAMs and see if there is any improvement.

Nice 3dmark 2001 results.
My best socket 370 score was 12105 : epox 3pta / celeron 1.1a sl6ca @ 1793 (163fsb) / radeon 9800 pro.

Could always try a high quality ddr400, it’s possible the chipset / memory controller itself has latency

overdrive333 wrote on 2022-01-04, 01:44:

Nice 3dmark 2001 results.
My best socket 370 score was 12105 : epox 3pta / celeron 1.1a sl6ca @ 1793 (163fsb) / radeon 9800 pro.

Thank you 😀 This mobo can score a lot on almost every graphics card 😀 I think the best option would be to run this configuration with GeForce 6800 ULTRA 😀 - then, even Crysis would be playable, I guess 😁

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-01-04, 04:51:

Could always try a high quality ddr400, it’s possible the chipset / memory controller itself has latency

NO NO NO! Not with this motherboard! The better sticks you use the worse it's going to be! The best so far were cheap GOODRAM and some Infineon RAMs. But still it's a lottery - you can try two IDENTICAL sticks and one is gonna work better and one worse. In some cases it doesn't work at all...

Now that I have two WORKING boards I can compare how they behave at 166 MHz with tualatins, and I can say that they DO NOT behave in the same way... So I can assume that it's also a matter of luck to find the RIGHT BATCH of rev 1.6 to be fully able to run it at 166 MHz... What is interesting is that on both batches there are absolutely NO PROBLEMS to run them with Tualatins at 166 MHz and proper SDR memory (qimonda chips)!!! 😀