X-bit labs

SiS to Bring 800MHz QPB Pentium 4 Processors into Notebooks?

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 07/31/2003 | 02:31 PM ]

It is definitely not a secret that Intel is trying to bring more and more powerful processors into portable computers market in order to aggressively grab a huge share of desktop replacement notebooks market. That is why Intel introduced special Mobile Pentium 4 processors with high – up to 3.06GHz – clock-speeds and 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus at relatively low price-points earlier this year. The conventional Intel Pentium 4-M CPUs still use 400MHz QPB and run at speeds of up to 2.60GHz in order to maintain relatively low power power-consumption and sacrificing performance for this reason. The Mobile Pentium 4 chips bring ultimate speed, but also consuming more power. It looks like this is not the end of boosting the speed of mobile chips and Intel may also introduce some Mobile Pentium 4 CPUs with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus! At least, Silicon Integrated Systems today announced its SiS M661FX chipset for mobile computers with support for 800MHz PSB.

SiS661MFX core-logic supports processors with 400, 533 and 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, and the Hyper-Threading technology, including the upcoming Prescott CPUs (oh, well, the hotties). Just like its desktop brother SiS661FX launched earlier this year, it boasts with single-channel PC3200 DDR SDRAM and external AGP 8x. SiSM661FX is paired with SiS964 South Bridge, which provides MuTIOL 1G technology, 8 USB 2.0/1.1, 2 ATA-133/100/66/33 IDE channels, 2 Serial ATA-150 ports; 6-channel AC’97 audio, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, Home PNA2.0 and so on.

SiS M661FX chipset also integrates a graphics core based on outdated SiS315 architecture. The core incorporates 2 pixel rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs on each one. The graphics in the desktop 661FX is clocked at 200MHz and is able to work with 32-64MB frame-buffer utilising SMA architecture, but there is no information about its performance in mobile version of the core-logic. Additionally, Real256E is bundled with 333MHz RAMDAC, NTSC/PAL TV-Out and Digital Interface support for various types of monitors.

Mass production of SiS661FX will commence in August 2003, probably the mobile version of the chipset will be in MP in the same time-frame. I do not know when we should expect Intel to reveal chips for notebooks with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, but it is possible that companies focused on powerful desktop replacement notebooks will simply use desktop Pentium 4 processors in some their products.