X-bit labs

SiS to Cancel SiS746DX. Plans to Start Mass-Production of SiS746FX this Month!

Category: Other

by Anton Shilov

[ 09/30/2002 | 01:34 PM ]

As AMD announces their 333MHz system bus supporting processors tomorrow, for core-logic makers as well as mainboard manufacturers it is the right time to unveil their products to support such platform.

VIA Technologies’ representatives unofficially admitted back in August that VIA KT400 chipset already supported 333MHz FSB for AMD Athlon XP processors, NVIDIA also declared 333MHz processor bus in their nForce2 solution in June. Only SiS still has not managed to launch 333MHz Socket A processors supporting core-logic device.

According to the original plan SiS decided to introduce three new chipsets for the Athlon XP platform. Two of them were showcased in Summer: SiS746 and SiS746DX, though, has not made it to the market. Both products support AGP 8x, MuTIOL interconnection between the North and South Bridges with peak bandwidth of 1GB per second. SiS746DX would have also supported DDR400 memory, while SiS746FX, originally set to come in the first quarter 2003, also offers 333MHz system bus. All three products utilise SiS963 I/O controller that provides 6 USB 2.0 ports, three IEEE1394 ports, 6 PCI, two channels of ATA-33/66/100/133, AC’97 and 10/100Mbit Ethernet.

Due to the fact that both VIA and SiS decided not to support DDR400, while AMD is now going to reveal their new Athlon XP processors with 333MHz system bus earlier than expected, SiS have to rearrange their plans.

SiS746 is not on the market yet, and it seems that there will be very few mainboards powered by this one, meanwhile, this chipset is already a bit outdated, since it cannot offer us support of CPUs with 333MHz FSB. As a consequence, SiS now wants to roll-out their SiS746FX with 333MHz process bus and PC3200 memory support in October this year. According to our sources the company will start the mass-production in about two weeks from now.

Mainboards based on SiS746FX core-logic will be available later this year from the closest partners of SiS, such as ASUS and ECS.