X-bit labs

Roundup of 7 Contemporary Integrated Graphics Chipsets for Socket 478 and Socket A Platforms (page 4)

Category: Chipsets

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 07/05/2004 | 11:09 AM ]

SiS 661FX

Silicon Integrated Systems has been long known as a chipset manufacturer as well as a developer of standalone graphics chips. You may recall such names as SiS305, SiS315 and SiS Xabre. Earlier graphics chips from SiS had much more popularity than the older seed – well, I remember myself using a SiS6202 graphics card for quite a while.

Time seems to have stopped for SiS with the release of the SiS315 for integrated graphics. Even the most advanced integrated chipset models of the company get this out-dated graphics core in their North Bridge. Notwithstanding the company’s activities in the discrete GPU market and the launch of the Xabre, a not-very-successful GPU against the competitors, but undoubtedly a more up-to-date solution than the SiS315, none of the integrated chipsets from SiS received this new graphics core so far.

The SiS 661FX seems to have been developed from the ordinary single-channel SiS648FX chipset for Pentium 4/Celeron CPUs. It supports Hyper-Threading, 800MHz FSB and PC3200 DDR SDRAM. On the other hand, the SiS661FX may be considered as a result of the evolution of the previous integrated chipset of the company, the SiS651, with added support of those faster processors, FSB and memory clock rates.

The SiS661FX inherited the graphics core from the previous models without any changes. In fact, it is a slightly adjusted – for the purpose of integration into the North Bridge – version of the standalone SiS315 GPU (see our SiS315 review dated November 2001!).

Here’s a list of the basic characteristics of the Real256E core, integrated into the SiS661FX chipset:

• Two pixel pipelines with one texture-mapping unit per each;
• Support of bi-linear and tri-linear texture filtering;
• Rendering of two bi-linearly or one tri-linearly filtered texture per pass;
• Hardware motion compensation and iDCT for DVD playback;
• 333MHz RAMDAC.

The SiS661FX is represented by the P4S800-MX-EAYZ mainboard from ASUS:

You may notice from the screenshot that this model appeals to people who don’t want to spend much money for a mainboard.

The P4S800-MX-EAYZ is made in the MicroATX form-factor. The slots and connectors:

• Socket 478 for Pentium 4 and Celeron processors with 400/533/800MHz FSB;
• 2 slots (1 channel) for PC2100/2700/3200 DDR SDRAM modules;
• 1 AGP 4x/8x slot, 3 PCI slots;
• 2 ATA 66/100/133 slots;
• 1 RJ-45 10/100 Fast Ethernet connector (VIA VT6103);
• 3 audio connectors: Line-out, Line-in and Mic-in (ADI AD1888);
• 1 VGA connector;
• 1 parallel and 1 serial port and 4 USB connectors.

We’ll see shortly if the SiS661FX chipset and the ASUS P4S800-MX-EAYZ mainboard can make a worthy competitor to the other products.