Great review! Two things - 1. The SIS reference board is almost always the fastest performing board with that particular chipset. I think it's premature to label it a winner until you can find a decent performing production board. 2. SIS has been making great chipsets for the Athlon since the 735, only no one knew about them because they typically ran second to VIA in memory banddwidth, which was what all the major review sites cared about. The HDD performance and overclocking headroom on the 735 and 745 both outclassed the VIA boards (KT266, KT266A, KT333) of the day, but they were hard to find and few manufacturers made anything better than cut-rate boards. The MSI 745 Ultra and the Leadtek 735 board were possibly the best of the early generation SIS athlon boards.
The current SIS748 chipset for the athlon 400FSB is actually very good, though again slightly slower than the KT600 is memory bandwidth. I just wish major sites would review the few boards that do use these chipsets, so we could start seeing higher quality boards like the DFI 748.
Purchase timing is my concern. I'm considering the AMD 64 3200+ & the Chaintech ZNF-150 w/ nForce3-150 chipset for Christmas. Am I on the edge of a change? If I wait a month or 2 will the AMD 64 3400+ and SIS755 or nForce3-250 chipsets be out? If these items won't be out for 6 mos. then I'll just be chasing technology. Buy now or wait? Any suggestions will be appreciated.
I'll wait til I see the performance of shipping boards before I jump ship...reference boards tend to be "tweaked" in some case. I'm currently lovin' my VIA K8T800 based Asus K8V Deluxe.
"To our surprise, SiS755 also provided the best performance in AnandTech benchmarks of any Athlon64 chipset that we have tested."
Did this realy surprise Anandtech? it didn't surprise me. For quite some time SiS southbridge chips have proven to be well designed, in fact whenever disk preformance was tested SiS has had some of the best scores. The main problem SiS has had in the past was with the performance of their memory controller. So it would only make sence that when the memory controller is no longer a concern, as it is with the Athlon 64, SiS would be able to show of its southbridge performance.
Other than your surprise about the performance I thought it was a good article. I hope Anandtech doesn't ignore future SiS (or ALi) AMD solutions like it has in the past with socket "A".
I noticed your description of the erratic booting/stability behavior when overclocking which is similar to overclocking problems described in the ipkonfig article-today's AT news post:http://www.ipkonfig.com/Articles/AMDCastrated/Page... . Is this due to data corruption in the HT link as a result of CPU speed being linked to the HT link speed?
I think performance will be influenced most by how "streamlined" everything in the chipset is (i.e. IDE drivers at maximum performance, things such as LAN and RAID taken off of the PCI bus and put on the Southbridge).
#1-We agree, and that feature is supposed to be available in the next version of our Graphing Engine. There is no current option to use different colors on single-set graphs. Before anyone asks again, the decision to use Flash for charts was because flash uses less bandwidth than any other option. On a site like AnandTech with very heavy traffic, bandwidth matters a great deal. We do not, as Editors, have the option to use other methods for charting.
#2-While we have not found a difference in performance in our benchmarks, some claim the nForce3-150 use of 600HT/8-bit instead of the specified 800HT/16-bit DOES hamper performance in some demanding applications. nVidia is fixing this in the nForce3-250 and claim they will also provide 800HT/16-bit. It is expected that future Athlon64 chips will run at even higher HT speeds. As stated in the review, SiS calims 1000HT speed for their new 755FX for Socket 939FX.
Even if we ignore the impact of Hyper-Transport speed, the SiS755 outperformed both nF3-150 and K8T800 in virtually every benchmark we ran. SiS755 also provides SATA RAID and 8 USB 2.0 - features missing from nF3-150. While we did not publish the IDE bandwidth tests, it is well-known that SiS has the best IDE controller and the 755 does perform better in IDE tests than either nVidia (2nd) or VIA (last).
Ok, maybe I haven't been keeping up with my A64 literature; but what is so important about being able to run at HT800, as opposed to 600? If the nForce3-150 performs on par with everything else, and can still use PC3200 memory like everything else, what's the problem?
Забор сетка-рабица. Простой, удобный и недорогой способ огородить территорию, скажем, придомовую у окон – это забор сетка арматурная-рабица. Сетка-рабица проста в изготовлении, легка в монтаже, а в зависимости от величины звеньев может стать или просто декоративным ограждением или серьёзной преградой на пути тех, кто хочет проникнуть туда, куда не следует.
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16 Comments
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Googer - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link
Lets Bench IT!MoronBasher - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link
I have a sis 746, and 735 and i can't wait for this chipset to come out!!!mason - Thursday, November 27, 2003 - link
Great review!Two things -
1. The SIS reference board is almost always the fastest performing board with that particular chipset. I think it's premature to label it a winner until you can find a decent performing production board.
2. SIS has been making great chipsets for the Athlon since the 735, only no one knew about them because they typically ran second to VIA in memory banddwidth, which was what all the major review sites cared about. The HDD performance and overclocking headroom on the 735 and 745 both outclassed the VIA boards (KT266, KT266A, KT333) of the day, but they were hard to find and few manufacturers made anything better than cut-rate boards.
The MSI 745 Ultra and the Leadtek 735 board were possibly the best of the early generation SIS athlon boards.
The current SIS748 chipset for the athlon 400FSB is actually very good, though again slightly slower than the KT600 is memory bandwidth.
I just wish major sites would review the few boards that do use these chipsets, so we could start seeing higher quality boards like the DFI 748.
destaccado - Thursday, November 27, 2003 - link
buy now.....asus k8v is an awesome board, in 2 months you might as well wait another two months, and another.....jeeptreker - Wednesday, November 26, 2003 - link
Purchase timing is my concern. I'm considering the AMD 64 3200+ & the Chaintech ZNF-150 w/ nForce3-150 chipset for Christmas. Am I on the edge of a change? If I wait a month or 2 will the AMD 64 3400+ and SIS755 or nForce3-250 chipsets be out? If these items won't be out for 6 mos. then I'll just be chasing technology.Buy now or wait? Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Gimpus - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link
When should we expect motherboards based on the SiS755 chipset to reach retail chanels?NFS4 - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link
I'll wait til I see the performance of shipping boards before I jump ship...reference boards tend to be "tweaked" in some case. I'm currently lovin' my VIA K8T800 based Asus K8V Deluxe.justly - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link
"To our surprise, SiS755 also provided the best performance in AnandTech benchmarks of any Athlon64 chipset that we have tested."Did this realy surprise Anandtech? it didn't surprise me.
For quite some time SiS southbridge chips have proven to be well designed, in fact whenever disk preformance was tested SiS has had some of the best scores. The main problem SiS has had in the past was with the performance of their memory controller. So it would only make sence that when the memory controller is no longer a concern, as it is with the Athlon 64, SiS would be able to show of its southbridge performance.
Other than your surprise about the performance I thought it was a good article. I hope Anandtech doesn't ignore future SiS (or ALi) AMD solutions like it has in the past with socket "A".
Pumpkinierre - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
I noticed your description of the erratic booting/stability behavior when overclocking which is similar to overclocking problems described in the ipkonfig article-today's AT news post:http://www.ipkonfig.com/Articles/AMDCastrated/Page... .Is this due to data corruption in the HT link as a result of CPU speed being linked to the HT link speed?
HammerFan - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
I think performance will be influenced most by how "streamlined" everything in the chipset is (i.e. IDE drivers at maximum performance, things such as LAN and RAID taken off of the PCI bus and put on the Southbridge).sandorski - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
SiS seems to be a contender with this chipset. Hopefully the Final shipping boards exhibit similar performance.I think this also lays to rest the idea that all Athlon64/FX chipsets will perform equally because of the onchip memory controller.
Wesley Fink - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
#1-We agree, and that feature is supposed to be available in the next version of our Graphing Engine. There is no current option to use different colors on single-set graphs. Before anyone asks again, the decision to use Flash for charts was because flash uses less bandwidth than any other option. On a site like AnandTech with very heavy traffic, bandwidth matters a great deal. We do not, as Editors, have the option to use other methods for charting.#2-While we have not found a difference in performance in our benchmarks, some claim the nForce3-150 use of 600HT/8-bit instead of the specified 800HT/16-bit DOES hamper performance in some demanding applications. nVidia is fixing this in the nForce3-250 and claim they will also provide 800HT/16-bit. It is expected that future Athlon64 chips will run at even higher HT speeds. As stated in the review, SiS calims 1000HT speed for their new 755FX for Socket 939FX.
Even if we ignore the impact of Hyper-Transport speed, the SiS755 outperformed both nF3-150 and K8T800 in virtually every benchmark we ran. SiS755 also provides SATA RAID and 8 USB 2.0 - features missing from nF3-150. While we did not publish the IDE bandwidth tests, it is well-known that SiS has the best IDE controller and the 755 does perform better in IDE tests than either nVidia (2nd) or VIA (last).
ViRGE - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
Ok, maybe I haven't been keeping up with my A64 literature; but what is so important about being able to run at HT800, as opposed to 600? If the nForce3-150 performs on par with everything else, and can still use PC3200 memory like everything else, what's the problem?Basse - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link
Again, why not use a different color for the tested item in the graphs?Otherwise, nice review :-)
Poe uk - Tuesday, December 31, 2019 - link
SiS make stellar chipsets, as far back as my days in 486 computing always had great experiences with them, very fast reliable and cool running.inoncuppobmip - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Забор сетка-рабица.Простой, удобный и недорогой способ огородить территорию, скажем,
придомовую у окон – это забор сетка арматурная-рабица.
Сетка-рабица проста в изготовлении, легка в монтаже, а в зависимости от величины звеньев может стать или просто декоративным ограждением или серьёзной преградой на пути тех,
кто хочет проникнуть туда, куда не следует.