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Manufacturing chipsets for
AMD's Athlon XP is one thing. SiS, VIA and NVIDIA
all vie for market share by focusing on different areas,
be it price, performance or features. Contending
with Intel in the Pentium 4 chipset market is quite a
different story, though. Between the i850E, i845PE,
and latest E7205 Granite Bay chipset, Intel has maintained
a commanding position in the Pentium 4 chipset market.
VIA has tried, with limited success, to attract attention
with its P4X266 and P4X400 chipsets, but Intel has been
quick to file suit, claiming VIA doesn't possess the
necessary bus license. SiS does have that
license though, and has received favorable reviews for its
645 chipset family.
The newest SiS flagship is its
648 Pentium 4 chipset, which incorporates support for
400/533MHz front side bus processors, includes AGP 8X
compatibility and official DDR333 (unofficial DDR400)
memory support. Surprisingly, boards based on
the 648 core logic, are demonstrating impressive
performance numbers that compare favorably to Intel's
i845PE and even rival the venerable i850E. Moreover, SiS 648 boards are significantly less expensive than their
Intel-based competitors. We've been kicking the ASUS
- SiS 648 based P4S8X, around the lab for a while now, to see exactly what
it's capable of and we've gotten some interesting results.
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| Specifications and Features of
ASUS' P4S8X |
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Fully Loaded |
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CPU:
Chipset:
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SiS 648 North Bridge / 963
South Bridge
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Supports Ultra DMA
33/66/100
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Accelerated Graphics Port
connector supports AGP 8X Interface
Memory:
Serial ATA:
Audio:
USB 2.0:
IEEE 1394:
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Realtek PHY with two IEEE
1394 ports
LAN:
Internal I/O
Connectors:
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1 AGP 8Xslot, 6 PCI 2.2 slots
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Floppy Port supports up to
2.88MB
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2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100
Connectors
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1 x Ultra DMA
33/66/100/133 Connectors (RAID)
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2 x Serial ATA 1.5G bps
Connectors (RAID)
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2 x USB headers, 1 x IEEE
1394 header
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1 x Smart Card Reader
connector
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CD/AUX/Modem audio input
Back Panel I/O:
Miscellaneous:
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ATX form factor
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Hardware monitoring -
Including Fan speeds, Voltages, CPU and System
environment temperature
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ASUS EZ Plug
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ASUS AGP warning LED
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ASUS Multi-language BIOS
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ASUS BIOS EZ Flash
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Supports Keyboard and
Mouse Power On
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Supports STR (Suspend to
RAM) and STD (Suspend to Disk)
THE
BUNDLE:
ASUS includes the hardware
necessary to take advantage of each of the P4S8X's
features. In addition to the board, ASUS bundles
a customized back plate to accommodate the
non-standard panel, a floppy cable, three IDE cables,
a Serial ATA cable, a serial port header, a header
that incorporates a game port and two USB 2.0 ports,
and an IEEE 1394 header. The instruction manual
is relatively easy to understand, though it doesn't
include much of the detail we'd expect from say, an
Abit motherboard. ASUS does however, add an
easy-to-reference sticker that outlines the location
and function of each jumper on the P4S8X.
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| | The
BIOS, Layout and Quality
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