Best performance for Intel P4... by SiS!

[Che Guevara]

Hi folks,

here some news about the official presented SiS/Rambus-chipset, which was mentioned in some older threads (some guys didn't believe it is really coming):

CPU supported Intel Pentium® 4 FSB 800 MHz CPU with Hyper-Threading technology

Quad Channels PC1200 RDRAM support Support Maximum Memory Bandwidth 9.6GB/s.

MuTIOL 1G® technology
Proprietary Interconnect between Northbridge and Southbridge. SiS MuTIOL® 1G deliver 1GB/s bandwidth.

8X AGP

Integrated SATA Controller with RAID functions. Provide 2 independent SATA ports, compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 Specification.Support RAID 0, 1 and JBOD.

ATA133 enhancement

AC97 Controller
Hollywood 3D stereo enriches audio surrounding with up to six channels.

Integrated Communication Controller for LAN or HPNA use MII interface used for 10/100Mbps LAN or 1/10Mbps HomePNA function.

Integrated USB2.0 Controllers
One controller for 8 ports

Anyone else who really wants this baby as soon as possible ?

[drzaius]

it does look promising, with samsung and asus backing the board. i'm a little concerned as the sis 658 did quite poorly compared to the ancient i850E. hopefully sis has revised a lot more on their chipset then just support for 4 channels.

[Che Guevara]

Where I can see benchmarks of the SiS 658? I've never seen a board with this chipset in germany...


Although I think 1200 Mhz Rimm and 4 channels are enough for best P4 performance, other features are up to date and very good too.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

RDRAM is coming back to life

but... when DDRII comes

[bsdgeek]

RAMBUS JUST WON'T DIE!!!!!!!!

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
RDRAM is coming back to life

but... when DDRII comes

The price of rambus is still too high and until the prices really drop it won't take off.

[Che Guevara]

DDRII???
2004 Rambus XDR DRAM comes!
The fastest DDR will be DDR2-667/PC2-5300-DIMMs (10,6 GByte/s), no chance against XDR.

6,4-GHz-XDR-DRAMs (quad data rate interface) used on a quad channel board: up to 100 GByte/s!!!!!!!!

They should be cheaper too and can also used at graphic cards...

a (german) article about XDR:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ciw-10.07.03-000/

[The PIT]

They going to be cheaper than DDR?????

[Technoid]

Won't ever happen

[drzaius]

RDRAM is cheaper to impliment then DDR, in terms of bandwidth. the DDR moduals are cheaper to make more so because they are mass produced. Intel's whole vision of "tomorrows" PC's are to have high frequency low pin count devices.. examples are.. serial ATA, RDRAM, PCI express. reason for doing this is because it is cheaper and requires less complex boards, both good things as PC's become faster and faster.

here's that review:

http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/ABIT/SI7G/

[bsdgeek]

Cheaper and less complex boards = Same price and higher profit margins.

[The PIT]

Except Rdram is more expensive to buy by around £70 to £100 for 512mb chip.
So if you've got a gig to replace it's getting rather exspensive.

[drzaius]

that's because the yeilds are still not at the same level as DDR. also the demand for PC use is lower as well. Rambus isn't still around just because they're doing poorly in the desktop market, it's because they are doing well in other areas like sony's PS2 (and is to be used in PS3 too i believe) and other high bandwidth devices. RDRAM will always be an alternatiuve to DDR as Rambus is just a design company, it doesn't cost much to run. also Samsung is a huge company and has been backing them for quite some time. Samsung isn't the largest memory maker (among other things) it is today because they made stupid decisions.

[Kurt]

Even now you can't find PC1066 easily. I don't suppose it will improve with PC1200. Also, given the general lack of interest for the Abit mainboard with the SIS 658 and given its subpar performance....maybe the 659 will be as fast as the Intel i850E? Unless there's a major speed increase in speed and a major decrease in price, it won't reach critical mass.

[Taz]

Originally posted by drzaius
that's because the yeilds are still not at the same level as DDR.

RDRAM is more expensive due to the way it's manufacturered rather than the lower production ammounts. With DDR each DRAM can be tested prior to fitment to the memory module, with RDRAM it can only be tested once the heat spreader is in place i.e. with the DRAM already attached to the memory modules.