The Japanese stores started selling mainboards based on a new chipset from SiS: SiS645DX. As you know, this chipset is a new version of the older SiS645 with the support of 533MHz processor bus and ATA/133 protocol. This way you have already got the opportunity to buy a mainboard for the upcoming processors with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus support, which are due in the second half of May. The first mainboard to start selling openly appeared ASUS P4S533.

I would like to stress that it is the only case when the world’s first mainboard on SiS chipset selling is not designed by ECS. Does it mean that close partnership between SiS and ECS has cracked, and ASUS became a new SiS’ favourite?

As for the ASUS P4S533 mainboard, it is a Socket478 solution equipped with 3 DIMM slots with official support of DDR266/DDR333 SDRAM and unofficial support of DDR400 SDRAM. Besides, there are 6 PCI slots, an AGP 4x slot, 6-channel sound implemented via C-media chip, 6 USB 1.1 ports, 10/100Mbit Ethernet support. The mainboard features ASUS’ brand Q-Fan technology (adjusting the fan rotation speed depending on the CPU temperature) and boasts some overclocking friendly options such as adjustable FSB frequency (up to 200MHz with 1MHz increment), Vcore (up to 1.85V) and Vdimm (up to 2.9V).

ASUS P4S533 sells at around $130.