Ugh, videos. Could you give a brief summary of the results here in old-fashioned text?

dionb wrote on 2025-08-12, 17:29:

Ugh, videos. Could you give a brief summary of the results here in old-fashioned text?

Seconded.

This board looks like an interesting experiment, which ultimately falls flat, because it wastes too much PCB space of the full ATX board for a midrange card.

Guys, I understand that some of you would prefer a written review with attached images, etc., but unfortunately I have little time available, and it’s much easier for me to share in this way. I don’t earn and don’t want to earn anything from this — my only goal is to give a visual record of my hardware and keep it archived forever (even in the future, if my pieces should die or for any other reason no longer be available to me). I hope I’m not offending anyone!
That said, The Serpent Rider, yes, you’re right, but in my opinion in this case it’s just a matter of evaluating the cost. €180 for a complete solution was truly a bargain for anyone on a tight budget.

This board seems like an interesting solution, but personally the SiS Xabre 400 by Triplex, which I once tried, didn't faze me, and drivers were troubled in some games (empty textures, missing objects, artifacts). To the end I sold it, to get a silver or white motherboard for an interesting build I failed (but they were made, i see somewhere). It was this one:

Soltek made some of them white boards too. I might snag one.

Ydee wrote on 2025-08-13, 09:01:

This board seems like an interesting solution, but personally the SiS Xabre 400 by Triplex, which I once tried, didn't faze me, and drivers were troubled in some games (empty textures, missing objects, artifacts). To the end I sold it, to get a silver or white motherboard for an interesting build I failed (but they were made, i see somewhere). It was this one:

These cards probably had driver issues, much more critical than one might expect. Several articles from that time report this. In my tests, however, these problems didn’t show up (I was using the drivers provided by ECS on their website). That said, I did try using an updated driver (the last available for the XABRE series) and it wasn’t stable at all.
The silver-colored card you share is very nice. If I’m not mistaken, they offered silver PCBs for something related to heat dissipation and electromagnetic interference.

Yes and they made even GF4 Titanium line on silver PCB. Nice pieces.

Yeah, 3DMark 2001 score on Xabre cards is also bullshit, because SiS did some specific optimizations for it.

I found a damaged ECS K7S7AG a few months ago. The board was picked up from a recycler, and was missing several SMD caps on the back of the GPU and northbridge. I installed caps similar to others found on the K7S7AG, and got it to post. The on board Xabre 400 plays Serious Sam and even Freelancer quite well when paired with an Athlon 2600+. 3DMark01 puts it around a Geforce 3 Ti. Not a bad mainboard, and a decent GPU. Drivers are very rudimentary, and performance varies greatly depending on driver version. I would not have minded having one of these as a fist computer with on board graphics, since by the time the Xabre 400 was completely obsolete, you'd best have upgraded the CPU and mainboard as well...

I guess these boards (ECS K7S7AG / P4S8AG) didn't really catch on because of cost. The on board Xabre 400 made them more expensive then other boards with graphics built into the chipset... shame.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-15, 07:28:

I found a damaged ECS K7S7AG a few months ago. The board was picked up from a recycler, and was missing several SMD caps on the back of the GPU and northbridge. I installed caps similar to others found on the K7S7AG, and got it to post. The on board Xabre 400 plays Serious Sam and even Freelancer quite well when paired with an Athlon 2600+. 3DMark01 puts it around a Geforce 3 Ti. Not a bad mainboard, and a decent GPU. Drivers are very rudimentary, and performance varies greatly depending on driver version. I would not have minded having one of these as a fist computer with on board graphics, since by the time the Xabre 400 was completely obsolete, you'd best have upgraded the CPU and mainboard as well...

I guess these boards (ECS K7S7AG / P4S8AG) didn't really catch on because of cost. The on board Xabre 400 made them more expensive then other boards with graphics built into the chipset... shame.

Well, first of all, congrats on the repair! I agree, I would have appreciated a board like that back in the day, though it’s easy to say that in hindsight. I mean, we’re all enthusiasts, and even stuff that used to seem terrible takes on a completely different perspective now. We undeniably have a more flexible approach to these products. As for the cost (at least here in Italy), the price was relatively low—around 180 euros for the complete board.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-13, 12:31:

Yeah, 3DMark 2001 score on Xabre cards is also bullshit, because SiS did some specific optimizations for it.

You’re absolutely right.

Retroinside wrote on 2025-08-15, 10:02:

Well, first of all, congrats on the repair! I agree, I would have appreciated a board like that back in the day, though it’s easy to say that in hindsight. I mean, we’re all enthusiasts, and even stuff that used to seem terrible takes on a completely different perspective now. We undeniably have a more flexible approach to these products. As for the cost (at least here in Italy), the price was relatively low—around 180 euros for the complete board.

And there is the problem... The K7S7AG was cost about as much as a KT400 based ECS L7VTA2 (a very popular budget board in my country back in the day) + a cheap Geforce 4 MX. The L7VTA2 was about 100$, and the Geforce 4 was 70-75$. Same performance, same price, but you got a dedicated GPU witch you could upgrade, plus a mainboard with an AGP slot - most people (myself included) would go with that. That relegates the K7S7AG to niche scenarios, like low profile or slim ATX cases - witch is in fact what I plan to do with my board.

Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-15, 10:24:

Retroinside wrote on 2025-08-15, 10:02:

Well, first of all, congrats on the repair! I agree, I would have appreciated a board like that back in the day, though it’s easy to say that in hindsight. I mean, we’re all enthusiasts, and even stuff that used to seem terrible takes on a completely different perspective now. We undeniably have a more flexible approach to these products. As for the cost (at least here in Italy), the price was relatively low—around 180 euros for the complete board.

And there is the problem... The K7S7AG was cost about as much as a KT400 based ECS L7VTA2 (a very popular budget board in my country back in the day) + a cheap Geforce 4 MX. The L7VTA2 was about 100$, and the Geforce 4 was 70-75$. Same performance, same price, but you got a dedicated GPU witch you could upgrade, plus a mainboard with an AGP slot - most people (myself included) would go with that. That relegates the K7S7AG to niche scenarios, like low profile or slim ATX cases - witch is in fact what I plan to do with my board.

Well, put that way I fully agree. It would have been pointless to choose this solution when there were so many more convenient alternatives. From the price lists I see in my Italian magazines, a Socket A motherboard from ECS with a VIA KT400 chipset cost about 100–110 €, and a GeForce4 MX was 90–130 € depending on the model.

There's a subtle difference: Xabre was "compatible" with DX8.1 (on paper), while GF4MX was only DX7. In real life, however, Xabre had a hardware-only pixel shader unit, the vertex shaders were emulated in drivers. And the drivers themselves needed more time (and money) to tune out than SiS was willing or able to spend.

Ydee wrote on 2025-08-16, 13:24:

In real life, however, Xabre had a hardware-only pixel shader unit, the vertex shaders were emulated in drivers.

I uh... did not know that. It makes sense tough, the performance is all over the place. A shame, it seems like the card had promise. Thanks for the info!

Ydee wrote on 2025-08-16, 13:24:

And the drivers themselves needed more time (and money) to tune out than SiS was willing or able to spend.

Yeah, that's painfully obvious. With the latest drivers Freelancer works great, but Serious Sam stutters like mad. With the second to last drivers, it's the other way around. The first drivers are downright broken - 3dmark01 scores are akin to a tnt2.

I found my 3dmark01 score in case anyone is curious:

The CPU is an Athlon XP 2600+ Thoroughbred @ 2.083 GHz (AXDA2600DKV3D)

Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-18, 17:09:

I found my 3dmark01 score in case anyone is curious:

The attachment xabre200 306 drv.jpg is no longer available

The CPU is an Athlon XP 2600+ Thoroughbred @ 2.083 GHz (AXDA2600DKV3D)

Very interesting. With Driver do you used?

Here's mine, for those didn't enjoy to watch the video.

I was using a T-Bred 2000+ with the Driver provided on the Driver's CDROM from ECS.

[/img]

Retroinside wrote on 2025-08-20, 12:43:

Very interesting. With Driver do you used? […]
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Socket3 wrote on 2025-08-18, 17:09:

I found my 3dmark01 score in case anyone is curious:

The attachment xabre200 306 drv.jpg is no longer available

The CPU is an Athlon XP 2600+ Thoroughbred @ 2.083 GHz (AXDA2600DKV3D)

Very interesting. With Driver do you used?

Here's mine, for those didn't enjoy to watch the video.

I was using a T-Bred 2000+ with the Driver provided on the Driver's CDROM from ECS.

[/img]

Could you share the driver?