ECS L4S8A (SiS 648): Value P4 Performance

ECS's relationship with SiS has been great for quite some time now. Even before SiS started to become famous after releasing their SiS 735 Athlon chipset to market in the summer of 2001, ECS and SiS were the best of friends. That relationship has only grown with such successes as the SiS 735-powered ECS K7S5A and ECS K7S6A.

Looking at the Pentium 4 market, we see ECS hasn't been as aggressive, and has even produced motherboard solutions based on VIA's controversial P4X series of chipsets (all the way up to the P4X400). While ECS certainly did have some well-balanced SiS 645 and 645DX solutions, it seems ECS really hasn't taken off in SiS-powered P4 boards. Perhaps the L4S8A will break this trend.

Today we take a look at the SiS 648-powered ECS L4S8A. The L4S8A is part of a series of SiS 648 powered boards, the other of which is the L4S8A2 (which excludes the onboard Serial ATA chip found on the L4S8A). Will the L4S8A series of motherboard become the next K7S5A? Probably not, but it's certainly a very attractive solution in a very crowded market. When it debuted, the K7S5A had no where near as much competition as the current Pentium 4 market has. This will make it difficult for the L4S8A to become a huge success, but that doesn't mean this isn't a solid motherboard.