SiS Announces 748 Chipset

[DentyCracker]

For AMD SiS 746FX is practically as fast as nforce2. In fact using the same memory it is faster. nforce2 is faster using dual channel memory though. It has as good if not better stability and wins in content creation benchmarks. It is also a lot cheaper.

[DentyCracker]

Apparently someone saw an ECS L7S8A mobo at Cebit. It is a 748 / 963L based mobo.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by K6-III
With PCI lock and .13 micron process, it may be easier to OC SIS746FX/SIS748 than the NForce2 without Voltmod to crazy FSB's...

Then again how sure is it you'll get overclocking settings on a low end product? This is usually reserved for more expensive boards as it costs more to produce. And more expensive boards don't have the SIS nametag on them.

A dog's a dog, even if it's a hot dog!

[Wombat]

I'm sorry, but WHAT? SiS is hardly low end these days. Also, my 745 Ultra is a great overclocker.

[piaxVirus]

SIS has decided to change their strategy. They will be targeting the higher end with future chipset releases. I do hope that some of their product line will continue to remain in the low end. When building computers for family and friends, I prefer not having to worry about them breaking down.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Although SiS WAS considered low end, they are trying their best to climb up the leader, and they definitely want to compete with VIA. However, although I am not saying VIA is any good (PCI ), I do admit my SiS745 is not the best thing I have ever seen. (It may be Asus's fault tho... some stability problems)

[K6-III]

The A7S333 is indeed Asus's fault. The MSI 745 Ultra has some 250mb/s extra memory bandwidth, a much better bios, OC capability.

Only areas where the Asus is ahead is power regulation circuitry and onboard audio (as if that matters)...

[DentyCracker]

Sounds like someone's talking out their arse here.

[Technoid]

Originally posted by Kurt
Stability is good, but face it: SIS chipsets are slow. Period. I'm very glad they have a good PCI implementation blah blah but for performance, look elsewhere.

Mayby, mayby NOT!

I have tested both SIS, VIA, Nvidia chipset mobos with the same cpu, mem, Hdd and the SIS was fastest!
On the other hand all of them was within 5% from each other

diff was that the SIS was the easiest
No bios changes from standard required to work, the VIA and the nvidia was not as nice in that way

[Ssin]

SiS tends to be alot better than VIA these day. What I must say is that after installing hundred of different computers I must admit that VIA is crap, SiS is better that what they used to be and frankly I even recommended it for Intel systems. And of course Intel chipsets rule.. for Intel processors.

[Nuno]

SiS chipsets are not slow, just old. 735 was the fastest chipset for the Athlon platform when it was launched. 745 is just a 735 with official DDR333 support.

nForce2 is arguably the best chipset for the Athlon at the moment. Via is just pure crap as it always was and it always will be for the forseable future. The 746 compared very well with the nForce, costing considerably less and so the 748 has potential to reach it.

My legendary ECS K7S5A was one of the best buys I did for my PC and it will last still for a long time. It´s definitly the most stable, compatible and troubless motherboard I ever owned. It´s well backed up with a reasonable powersupply (Chieftech 360W) and some quality DDR266 Crucial Ram, but I can say that a generic 300W powersupply, no-name brand 368Mb SDRAM, a KyroII, a GF4 Ti4400, a Radeon 9700, 2 seagate 7200 rpm disks, a LG burner and a samsung DVD combo, a sb live!, a sb audigy, a surecom 10/100 ethernet card, a Via (yikes!) USB 2.0 PCI card, an MS explorer USB mouse, a RCA USB cable modem, a HP 930 USB printer, an epson 640u USB scanner, a Fuji USB digital camera, all of them have passed for this system without a single hicup, crash, odd behaviour or nightmare instalation, and that´s more than I can say for the 3 Via systems I owned.

So I can easily trade that for 5-10% more performance on 640x480x16 gaming

And I´m confident that the XP2400+ I´ll be buying next month (running a XP1600+@1500Mhz now) and my new Radeon 9700 will be just enough to hang on for the next 1,5 to 2 years. But then again, I think I´ve said this before

[Nowhere]

Just curious...how the AMD 760 stand among others? (I know it's outdated and relatively slow, but what about other things like stability or any via-like troubles?)

I wonder too what can we expect from AMD (and others) chipset for hammer...will we see finally Intel quality?

[Nuno]

The AMD760 was the first of Athlon DDR chipsets. Pretty robust and compatible, though. Via KT266 was marginally faster and SiS 735 was the fastest of the three. ALI Magik1 was a perfect disaster, being as buggy as Via and slower than the AMD760.
Via then fixed the broken memory controller and got the KT266A that was the performance leader of the DDR266 chipsets. Nforce1 was on the middle of the lot.

Then KT333 (KT266A with DDR333 support) and SiS 745 (735 with DDR333 support) maintained the relative differences among them.

KT400 was a flop, adding *unnoficial* DDR400 support to the KT333 and AGP 8X/166 fsb. Problem is that with DDR400 it was generally slower than with DDR333...

SiS 746 introduced AGP 8X and a few performance ehancements.

Then Nvidia made the nForce2 and won the performance crown.

[Taz]

Originally posted by Nuno ..ALI Magik1 was a perfect disaster, being as buggy as Via and slower than the AMD760.

My Iwill XP333-R, with it's ALi Magik 1 chipset, is working just fine, probably the most stable board I've used and performance is pretty good too

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Wombat
I'm sorry, but WHAT? SiS is hardly low end these days. Also, my 745 Ultra is a great overclocker.

Get real. High end boards DO NOT have SIS chipsets. Don't mistake what I say. It doesn't mean the chipset is not valid, it means motherboard makers don't use them into high-end boards.

Why? Because ppl don't associate SIS with performance. It's associated with "cheap", which is usually pretty close to "it sucks".

They haven't released a chipset that "knocks your socks off" since the 735 -which they couldn't deliver and ended up selling basically all of them to ECS.

VIA sucks. That's common knowledge. However they do deliver regularly the fastest chipsets for AMD -until the Nforce2.

Nvidia made a good attempt with Nforce1, but it was too late to market and buggy. Nforce2 fixed that.

So, the situation is: SIS is low end, VIA is inbetween and Nvidia tops them off.

Performance-wise the situation is also the same. Even if chipset A overclocks better than chipset B, ppl will buy chipset B if it's faster at non-OCed speeds. That's 90+% of the buyers for you.

The "who's fastest" picture changes every new chipset release. Maybe SIS will have a good run with their 746FX and 748 chipsets, but you're not likely to see them on high end boards so soon unless they're an instant hit. From what I can tell, they won't be.