|
A lot of hype
and controversy has surrounded Intel's latest chipsets,
the i865 Springdale and the i875 Canterwood, and they are
proving to be very capable solutions for the Pentium 4
processor. But the question remains to be asked; what have
the other chipset designers been up to? We haven't seen
VIA's latest offering make much noise, but SiS has kept
forging ahead, looking to improve on their previous
offerings. If you recall, we had a look at an
MSI board based on the SiS648 back in late October of
2002, and it fared very well when compared to Intel i845PE
based motherboards. We even went so far as to label it as
one of the fastest DDR-based chipsets for the Pentium 4.
Since then, starting with Granite Bay motherboards, dual
channel DDR has become the norm, and front side buses have
been pushed up to 800MHz. SiS went back to the proverbial
drawing board, and tinkered with the 648 chipset to create
the 648FX. The 648FX supports CPU Hyperthreading at 400,
533, and 800MHz FSB, and officially supports DDR400, but
only in single channel configurations. Obviously, the
memory bandwidth is therefore much lower than the
Canterwood or Springdale, and they can't necessarily be
compared head to head.. Instead, the SiS648FX can be
considered something of a "go-between", offering an
upgrade in performance over 845-based boards, but falling
short of an 865/875. Gigabyte's GA-8S648FX is the first
motherboard based on the 648FX that we have had in the
labs. Is there enough power in this board to make this
Giga bite? Ouch, that was rough.
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR
AN ENLARGED VIEW
|
|
|
Specifications & Features of
The GA-8S648FX |
|
What makes this board tick? |
|
|
CPU
SUPPORT
-
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with
Hyper-Threading Technology
-
Socket 478 Pentium 4 Processors
-
Supports 800MHz, 533MHz or 400MHz Front Side
Bus
CHIPSET
SYSTEM MEMORY
BIOS
HARDWARE MONITOR
-
System health status auto-detect and report by
BIOS
-
Hardware detecting and reporting for case
open, power-in voltage, CPU voltage, and fan
speed.
AUDIO FEATURES
|
PCI
IDE INTERFACE
-
2
IDE bus master (UDMA33/ATA66/ATA100/ATA133)
IDE ports
-
Supports up to four ATAPI devices
-
Supports PIO Mode 3,4 Enhanced IDE and ATAPI
CD-ROM
-
Bus mastering reduces CPU utilization during
disk transfer
REAR PANEL I/O PORTS
-
2
USB 2.0/1.1 ports
-
2
DB-9 serial ports
-
1
DB-25 parallel port
-
1
mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
-
1
mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
-
3
audio jacks: line-in, line-out, and Mic-in
-
1
Game/MIDI Port
I/O
CONNECTORS
-
2
connectors for 4 additional external USB
2.0/1.1 ports
-
1
1394 pin header (supports 3 FireWire ports via
optional daughter card S1394)
-
1
front audio connector for external line-out
and Mic-in jacks
-
2
internal audio connectors (CD-in and AUX-in)
-
1
connector for Surround/Center audio channel
-
1
S/PDIF output connector
-
2
IDE connectors
-
1
floppy connector
-
2
ATX power supply connectors
-
3
fan connectors for CPU fan, NB fan, and
chassis fan
EXPANSION SLOTS
FORM FACTOR
|
|
|
|
|
Specifications
of
the SiS648FX |
|
What's happening on the other side of the fence |
|
SiS made a
tidy little upgrade to their existing 648 chipset, adding
support for 800MHz front side bus Pentium 4 CPUs and
Hypertheading while keeping all of the good points intact.
Combined with DDR400 and AGP8x support, and SiS's
proprietary MuTIOL interconnect between the North Bridge
and South Bridge, the SiS648FX is poised as a high-end,
low-cost solution for the mainstream user. What SiS
doesn't bring to the table, however, is dual DDR memory
channels, which would have increased overall performance,
and native support for Serial ATA or RAID configurations.
You might notice that 2 SATA ports are listed in the
chipset schematic above, but these come at the price of a
PCI-based SiS 180 Serial ATA controller. Being PCI-based,
this could lead to bottlenecks on the already burdened PCI
bus. From what we have heard, SiS' future plans
involve a new SiS964 South Bridge, which should have SATA
support built in, and is the logical choice for future
revisions of the 648FX and 655FX.
Considering
the features, the 648FX falls somewhere in between the
older i845/SiS648 boards and the current crop of
Springdales and Canterwoods. So, on which end of the
scale will it end up? We took one company's SiS648FX
board, the Gigabyte GA-8S648FX, and compared it to two
boards from our
Springdale Showdown to find out. While doing so,
we took one board, the Abit IS7-G, that comes with a
PAT-like memory enhancement, and another board that
didn't, the Chaintech Apogee 9PJL. These two boards
should give us a good idea of how the performance of the
SiS648FX compares.
We take a closer look
at the challenger
|
