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The
SiS655FX Reference Motherboard |
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Not
What You Would Expect |
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While we are not
formerly evaluating the motherboard, that we used for
testing, since it isn't a retail product, we thought we'd
give you a glimpse of the reference model as well as some
BIOS shots. The motherboard is purely an engineering
sample, with only two PCI slots and limited features.
In the end however, looks and layout are not the issue at
hand, performance is.
When speaking
about performance, the most important issue that we came
across was the inability to run our memory at aggressive
timings. With this model, we went into the BIOS an
found quick pick combinations of timing settings ranging
from "Safe" to "Fast+++" to "Manual" which allows for user
specific settings. Unfortunately, we had some
stability issues with the reference board, with timings set
any higher than "Fast" (2.5,3,3,7,2). The Kingston
HyperX Memory we used, is rated at 2, 3, 3, 6 all the way up
to 433MHz, so that couldn't have been the problem.
This is a major issue with the board we tested, but it may
not be representative of commercially released motherboards
bearing the SiS655FX.
Let's get
started...
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HotHardware Test Systems |
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Intel All The Way |
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SIS 655FX Reference Motherboard
DFI
Infinity Intel 865PE Motherboard
eVGA GeForce4 Ti4600
128MB
Pentium 4-B 2.4GHz
512MB Kingston HyperX PC3500 DDR-RAM
Western Digital 30GB
ATA-100 7200RPM Hard Drive
Creative 52X C-DROM
Windows XP Pro SP-1
DirectX 9.0b
Detonator 45.23
SiS Reference Drivers
Intel Chipset Drivers
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SiSoft Sandra
MAX3!
To get
things started, we loaded SiSoft Sandra MAX3! and
ran several of the more popular modules, comparing the
results to the reference Intel 865PE chipset.
First we ran the CPU, Multimedia, and Memory tests
followed by Cache and File system tests.
With the CPU
tests, the SiS655FX was slightly more aggressive,
maintaining a slim edge with both Dhrystone and
Whetstone tests. With the Multimedia Module
however, the tests were a little more balanced with the
655FX taking a minor lead in Integer tests while the
Intel 865PE maintained the lead in Floating Point tests.
CPU @ 2.4GHz.
SiS 655FX
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Multimedia
SiS 655FX
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Memory
SiS 655FX
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CPU
Intel 865PE
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Multimedia
Intel 865PE
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Memory
Intel 865PE
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Memory performance was a
different picture altogether, most likely a result of
the timing issues we mentioned earlier. In the
integer test the margins were quite close, however,
floating tests were in favor of the Intel 865PE by close
to 100 points. When we step down to the cache
performance test, both system's returned virtually
identical results, with the curves being a carbon copy
of the other.
Cache
SiS 655FX
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Hard Drive
SiS 655FX
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Cache
Intel 865PE
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Hard Drive
Intel 865PE
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One of the main claims to
fame of the SiS655FX was enhanced hard drive performance
thanks to Hyperstreaming. At first glance this was
not immediately evident when looking at the main score,
however, when we look at the benchmark breakdown, the
details become more clear. In this test we used
the same physical drive in each test machine and yet the
differences were sizeable. When you compare the
Buffered Read results, the SiS655FX posted 947MB/s
compared to 79MB/s with the i865PE. The Random
Read posted a 3MB advantage with the SiS655FX and the
Buffered Write test were as lopsided and the Buffered
Read test, with the SiS 655FX turning out 1272MB/s vs
76MB/s with the Intel system. However, this indeed
could have been an anomaly with the Sandra hard drive
test, so we urge you not to over analyze these
measurements. The remainder of the benchmark
breakdown bounced back and forth between the two on
average of a couple of MB/s either way.
While we find synthetic
benchmarks to be a quick and dirty way to assess various
hardware components, in the end it all comes down to
performance in the real world. Time and again
we've seen hardware look amazing on paper and fall flat
in the benchmarking arena. With the SiS655FX
showing much promise thus far, we found ourselves hoping
that it wouldn't let us down. Let's take a look.
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Time For
Futuremark's Finest
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