X-bit labs

Annual Hardware Overview: A Glance Back at the Year 2003 (page 8)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 01/08/2004 | 11:51 PM ]

Curiously, the 55xx platform family from SiS never made a foothold in the market as the EPIA did. The basic shortcoming of the platform is the weak x86 processor core borrowed from Rise. As for ordinary chipsets for ordinary PCs, SiS is quite good at building them. On the other hand, SiS got a license for chipset technologies for the Pentium M CPU and already showed two models: SiSM661MX and SiS648MX. MicroATX mainboards with the Mobile Pentium 4 appeared last year, so we may even see desktop systems on the Pentium-M this year, who knows.

SiS651 remained OEMs’ choice and SiS replaced it in 2003 with the SiS661 supporting 800MHz FSB (and with the SiS661FX including an integrated DirectX 9 graphics core of their own design). Yes, SiS was long negotiating with Intel on the bus licensing terms, but quickly settled the matter after the news that VIA had already got it. The company managed to be the first to produce a Pentium 4 chipset supporting 800MHz FSB. It was SiS648FX, a modified version of SiS648. That’s quite a well-done chipset, accepted by many mainboard makers.

Other products from SiS were quite successful, too. They are two improved versions of the dual-channel SiS655: the FSB800-supporting SiS655FX and the SiS655TX that appeared in the end of 2003 and supported accelerated memory access mode (something like PAT from Intel), which makes it a competitor to the i875P. The above-mentioned chipsets enjoyed a steady demand, too.

SiS undertook a few other attempts to get accepted in the high-end sector. SiSR658 was mostly an image-making product, and SiSR659 announced in 2003 is the more so. They announced it as many as four times! By the end of the year, this setup with the RDRAM-supporting chipset looked like a farce rather than anything serious. By the way, Intel stopped taking orders for the i850E and i860 – the Rambus affair is all over now.

RADEON 9100 IGP was much more real than SiSR659. ATI’s second attempt to design a chipset appeared at least partially successful. Although the chipset was released without the South Bridge, it looked good enough. Some middle-range mainboard makers, and ASUS and Gigabyte tried to use it in their products (as an addition to ATI’s GPUs?).

Their third attempt may be even better, although it’s going to meet a tougher competition. There are three basic topics: DDR II, PCI Express (South Bridges), and transition to the Socket T. These three features are expected in a bunch in the spring of 2004 when the following chipsets should come out: Grantsdale, SiS656, PT890, ATI RS400. They all support DDR II and DDR as well as the PCI Express. The Grantsdale adds Socket T support, others are uncertain on that matter, but anyway they could implement it in next chipset revisions.

I doubt that we will get a serious performance gain from first DDR II modules and PCI Express expansion cards compared to current solutions. Faster solutions will appear later. We will also see the next generation of integrated graphics in North Bridges. They are all going to be DirectX 9-compatible with a performance of current MX440-RADEON 9200.