Benchmarks IV and thoughts
Whilst X²: The Threat shows marked differences between CPUs of various speed grades, it's a very close knit affair here.
Just about where you would expect the SiS655FX to finish if you've been privy to the benchmarks that have gone before.
The Unreal Tournament 2003 bot match puts almost all the onus on the CPU, memory, AGP card and AGP driver. Here we see the SiS655FX come up a little short for once. The Athlon 3200+ 64's impressive power at display again.
Thoughts
SiS655FX should find itself a cosy niche in the Pentium 4 motherboard market. Its chief weapon will be price, and with system integrators looking to produce HT-capable systems at affordable prices the SiS655FX looks like an ideal choice, assuming that the Taiwanese outfit can recruit a number of first-tier manufacturers. It returned more than adequate benchmarks in each and every test, and it came within touching distance of the performance Springdale and Canterwood chipsets from Intel. The 964 South Bridge is remarkably featured for one that's essentially a budget offering, and the reference board was rock stable at default speeds. SiS' integrated approach, decent feature set and expected low price will make it a favourite of system integrators, who are often put off the Pentium 4 path by the motherboard expense.
It's just a shame that we couldn't hands-on test SiS' HyperStreaming technology, as it sure sounds good on paper. Enthusiasts and power users may shy away from SiS' chipsets, but there's a whole world of people just dying to get their hands on Pentium 4 Hyper-Threading power at low prices. That's exactly the kind of market that SiS and its collaborators need to exploit. It may not be the fastest, most feature rich or overclocking-friendly chipset currently available for the P4, but its got enough raw talent to do well in the low-to-mid price sector.
We'll wait on retail examples' performance before passing judgment, but it does appear that there's another viable proposition for users demanding dual-channel power from Intel's latest CPUs. It's just a shame that SiS didn't go the whole way by attempting to beat the integration available on competing solutions. Expect dual-channel 800MHz FSB motherboards to be cheaper than has recently been the case. Bottom line is that the SiS655FX gives the consumer even more choice with respect to their buying decisions. The low-end Springdale boards had better watch out. They have a serious competitor to worry about.
