SiS Brings Out the First Chipset with Integrated Graphics for AMD Athlon 64!

by Anton Shilov
09/22/2003 | 09:22 AM

Silicon Integrated Systems today formally announced the first ever core-logic for AMD Athlon 64 processors with integrated graphics core at Computex Taipei 2003. The chipset will make possible cost-effective 64-bit systems powered by AMD technology; however, it is hardly going to be adopted widely this year due to current positioning of AMD Athlon 64 microprocessors.

SiS760 with integrated graphics core and SiS964 I/O controller provides the majority of necessary features for a complete AMD Athlon 64 system for productive work, as a result, the chipset has virtually everything to be successful. From now its wide utilization depends on AMD’s ability to supply relatively inexpensive AMD Athlon 64 CPUs and SiS ability to sell it in significant quantities.

The main advantage of SiS Ultra256E graphics core is support for both local frame-buffer as well as frame-buffer in system memory (SMA). As AMD64 processors have memory controllers inside, integrated graphics solutions that generally utilize part of system RAM as a frame-buffer will not work really fast due to a number of transactions between GPU, CPU and system memory. In order to work around this peculiarity of AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron chips, SiS enabled external frame-buffer support by SiS760.

Basically, it means that SiS760 is not only an AGP 8x tunnel with built-in graphics, but a fully-functional North Bridge with memory controller providing frame-buffer of up to 128MB. Unfortunately, the graphics core itself is not a powerful performer, as far as I understand. SiS760 incorporates SiS’ Real256E graphics core based on outdated SiS315 architecture. The graphics core features 2 pixel rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs on each one, 333MHz RAMDAC, NTSC/PAL TV-Out and Digital Interface support for various types of monitors.

Here are the official specifications of SiS760 North Bridge:

• Supports AMD Athlon 64/Opteron CPUs;
• 1G MuTIOL architecture to connect North and South Bridges, not the ;
• AGP 8x slot.
• SiS Ultra256E graphics core with support for own frame-buffer.

In case you do not know the main specs of SiS964 I/O controller, here they are:

• 6 PCI slots;
• 8 USB 2.0 ports;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support;
• 6-channel audio-solution;
• Fast Ethernet/Home Networking Controller with MII Interface.

Mass production of SiS760 starts this month, SiS claimed during announcement at Computex Taipei 2003. Mainboard makers have already started the mainboard design work with the engineering samples of SiS760, certainly, no actual products are announced at this time. I believe that mass production of SiS760-based mainboards will not start until late this year or early next year because AMD Athlon 64 CPUs will have too high cost for systems with integrated graphics in 2003.