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Review: SiS655FX dual-channel P4 chipset

by Tarinder Sandhu on 9 October 2003, 00:00

Tags: SiS (TPE:2363)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qat3

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System setup, notes and O/C

Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
  • AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (DDR400, single channel)
  • Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU
  • SiS655FX reference board
  • EPoX 8HDA3+ VIA K8T800 motherboard
  • ABIT IC7-MAX3 i875P Canterwood (21/08/03 BIOS)
  • EPoX 4PDA2+ Springdale (15/8/03) BIOS

Other components

  • ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
  • 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-6-2-2 @ DDR400 for all P4 motherboards. Run with 'Enhanced' on the IC7-MAX3. Run with 2.5-3-3-10 timings on the EPoX 8HDA3+ VIA K8T800, which can't be changed
  • Liteon 16x DVD
  • Samcheer 420w PSU
  • Dell P991 19" flat-faced monitor
  • AMD reference S940 / S754 cooler
  • Thermaltake AX478 cooler with a 25CFM fan

Software

  • Windows XP Professional SP1
  • DirectX9.0a
  • SiS v1.16a AGP driver, v2.04 mini IDE driver, v1.02.07a SATA RAID driver
  • Intel 5.00.1012 chipset drivers
  • ATI CATALYST 3.7 drivers and control panel (6378s)
  • Pifast v41 to 10m places
  • LAME v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (631MB)
  • XMPEG v5.02 and DivX 5.05 Pro
  • Kribi Bench 1.19
  • HD Tach 2.61
  • WinRAR 3.20
  • ScienceMark 2.0
  • Realstorm Raytracing benchmark v1.10 320x180x32
  • 3DMark 2001SE v330
  • UT2003 retail game (Build 2225) Bot Match
  • X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
  • Comanche 4 benchmark
  • Serious Sam 2: Sierra De Chiapas Demo.
  • Quake 3 v1.30 HQ

Notes

The SiS655FX will be compared to an EPoX i865PE motherboard using a PAT-like BIOS and the class-leading ABIT IC7-MAX3 Canterwood with a highly tuned BIOS. The AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and VIA K8T800 will be used as a yardstick of just where AMD is at. Benchmarks were conducted at 1024x768x32 85Hz unless otherwise stated.

Issues

The SATA drivers were installed and the BIOS picked up a 120GB native SATA Seagate hard drive without problems. However, the board wouldn't successfully boot with it in place and a 40GB IBM IDE drive as boot master. No number of combinations would allow SATA testing in an OS environment. We were looking forward to exploring SiS' HyperStreaming claims with some hands-on testing. Secondly, the IBM hard drive would often spin down when idling for a few seconds without good reason, and with idling cancelled from within the power options control panel. Other than this, though, it was stable enough for a rigorous testing and benchmarking session. It managed smoothly to run with all four DIMM slots populated (4 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2).

Overclocking tests were undertaken with a highly overclockable 3.0GHz 800MHz CPU. The reference board appeared to be smooth at 235MHz (940MHz QDR). We're looking forward to retail examples' overclockability. The reference board provided a number of FSB-to-DRAM ratios, ensuring that system memory wasn't the limiting factor. Springdales and Canterwoods have been known to hit 300MHz+ with passive cooling.

Running speeds

3231.9MHz - SiS655FX

3222.6MHz - EPoX 4PDA2+ Springdale

3208.2MHz - ABIT IC7-MAX3 Canterwood

2000MHz - EPoX K8T800 / Athlon 64 3200+

SiS is guilty of FSB inflation, running at 21MHz faster than the ABIT Canterwood. Please bear this in mind when comparing the upcoming results.


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