SiS 756: PCI Express for AMD Socket 939

by Wesley Fink on 9/13/2005 12:05 AM EST
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  • DarkFoon - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link

    Maybe I missed it in the article, but am I the only person who noticed the large "tab" connector (for want of the correct term) on the bottom of the board? It looks like it plugs into a larger board; Is this for blade computing?
    What is it?
  • Peter - Friday, September 16, 2005 - link

    I can but shake my head in disbelief that there's an entire page dedicated to how the chipset handles RAM ... I thought everyone should have figured by now that the AMD64 platform has the RAM controller inside the CPU, and the chipset has no business on the RAM at all. This should at least have filtered through to reviewers, no?

    regards,
    Peter
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, September 17, 2005 - link

    Peter -

    You should have read the RAM page instead of shaking your head. Had you done so you would have discovered that DESPITE the memory controller on Athlon64 being on the chipset, optimal tRas timings are different with each Athlon64 chipset. We proved this long ago.

    How the chipset communicates with the on-chip memory controller DOES have an impact on memory performance, though that influence is much less than the chipset-based memory controlers like those for Intel. If you want proof run an industry-standard mem86 test CD ROM on the nForce4, ATI, VIA, ULI, and SiS A64 chipsets. The difference in memory bandwidths for the SAME tested memory using the SAME A64 Processor will surprise you.

    As a review site we question and measure conventional wisdom and PR spin. Things are not always as you are told they are by manufacturers or self-appointed experts.
  • JeSpre - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link

    I've been after this board since I read the ocworkshop review about a month ago. I've requested it at several online retailers also. Most 939 mATX boards are pretty lousy by comparison. A linux user really can't even consider one with an ATi chipset, while the NForce4 boards (really just one with or without gigabit ethernet) are pretty weak (especially with regard to overclocking), and have their own issues. Meanwhile, SiS already has linux drivers on their site for download. Couple that with the overclocking potential, and this is really the only board I'm after unless some good NVidia C51 mATX boards come along.
  • justly - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I saw this last night and reread it today to make sure I didn’t miss anything. What I found was disappointing. My disappointment wasn’t in the chipset but your choice to review a reference board that already has production boards made from it (although not available in the US). You even stated (3 time I believe) that reference boards where shipped almost 6 months ago (this isn’t my idea of a timely “review”) especially when OCWorkbench did a review of a production board in the first week of JULY (a full two months ahead of Anandtechs reference board “review”).

    I was glad to see Anandtech review the ULi M1695 reference and production board so quickly (although I would say that this doesn’t make up for the lack of reviews for any earlier ULi chipset boards, or production ATi chipset boards, or the lack of most VIA board reviews, or this horribly late SiS reference board review… get the point?). The sad thing is I don’t believe Anandteck would have been on top of the ULi chipset reviews if they had not heard about its overclocking potential at a trade show.

    Referencing the review at OCWorkbench, this new SiS chipset is able to attain a HTT of 285MHz, so it’s not a dismal overclocker like your “review” (of the reference board) seems to indicate. Then you want to complain about its lack of features, fair enough as long as you compare it to similarly priced boards. After all most of those features do come with a price, do they not?

    It was also nice to finally see someone say that (Ethernet) CPU utilization is a worst case scenario that will almost always be much lower than what was measured. I agree SiS needs to work on this, but I don’t think it’s as important as some make it out to be.


  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link

    After being severely burned in past SiS chipset reviews - where the chipset was great but no mainstream boards ever appeared - our intention was to wait until retail boards appeared with the SiS 756 before reviewing this SiS chipset. We've waited a long time, and the closest we have to a retail 756 for review is the A9 module for the ECS PF88 modular motherboard. This would not really be a fair review for SiS.

    OC Workbench is in Singapore, so it is natural they always have a handle on the value chipsets and boards so popular in Asia. Many of thiose boards, as you pointed out, never make it to the US or other parts of the world. We did not receive a similar 756 board for review, though we did try to get one for review.

    SiS has complained about our ULi coverage and the absence of SiS coverage, and in the interest of completeness we decided to review the 756 we had bypassed. We asked SIS first if they wanted to provide an updated BIOS for the Reference Board or an updated board, but we heard nothing back from them. Frankly you are right, we should have reviewed a retail board, but if a retail board is not available I will make no apologies for reviewing the only SiS 756 we could get - the Reference Board. We were honest about availability and issues.

    SiS did provide us with updated chipset information, so we also provided the latest information available on the entire SiS chipset line and the new Southbridges that will soon be available in this review. This information was not available when the 756 Reference first shipped.
  • justly - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link

    I appreciate your candor regarding SiS and the unprofessional business dealings that you experienced or heard about.

    On the other hand, feeling that you got severely burned because no manufacturer made a board using SiS that was up to your standards is absurd. Just because you gave a chipset a favorable rating doesn’t mean people will buy it, and if people don’t buy it why would a manufacturer want to make it, it should have no effect on how you feel.

    SiS is by no means blameless, but you have to realize that even though you gave a SiS chipset an “Editor's Choice” award that is where you stopped. I cant remember the last time Anandtech recommend any chipset other than Nvidia in any guide, in fact every time I have seen an Anandtech staff member respond to a post about SiS it was ALLWAYS negative (complaining about no unified drivers, no beta drivers for an unavailable beta OS, lack of features/overclocking potential).
    Even in your writings there is a slight negative undertone about SIS (I don’t think you do this on purpose). Maybe I am wrong but when you refer to SiS boards as “bottom-dwelling” or that “no mainstream boards ever appeared” I have to wonder if the boards are really that bad or are your expectations a little too high for “mainstream”.

    I hope you have better luck with SiS in the future, and thanks again for the insight to SiS business practices.

  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, September 15, 2005 - link

    Very few major sites review SiS, ULi, Jetway and Asrock. We do at AnandTech, because we believe a good product deserves a revew, no matter who makes it. So the issue is definitely not bias on the part of AnandTech.

    SiS fuled one of the best Intel boards I have ever owned. Anand also loved this board made by Gigabyte. However, since the SINXP we have all been patiently waiting for an encore from SiS. Sometimes the story is not as simple as the "big manufacturers won't use my chipset".
  • nserra - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link

    Well then you must consider in moving into my country ;)

    Because here you have them all from the top quality to the lower ones.
    All these SIS and Uli boards are seeling here as these nvidia SLI,...

    And i agree that you point out the missing "great" features, but don't forget that one board costs 150€ and the other 70€ or less.
  • Rza79 - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    In the motherboard 'Basic Features' table you state that it's using the 965L while the picture shows it's using the 965.

    You are testing a reference board!!! Since when does a reference board overclock well or even overclock at all. You shouldn't even test it because a reference board isn't optimised for that.
    While Uli's reference board did overclock well, it doesn't mean all of them should.
    The ASrock 939S56-M can do 285Mhz FSB.

    Can you tell me one chipset that has Firewire by default?
    Your conclusion is like making a conclusion for a retail board.
    Firewire, overclocking, ... on a reference board??? That's why it's called a reference board. It's a reference for manufacturers ... not overclockers.

    Even by today standards the 965 southbridge is ok.
    Exept for not having HDA because i consider sata300 a checklist feature.
  • tanekaha - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I dunno if it`s cos i`m using the latest firefox beta but
    the ethernet page only loads down to this line

    NTttcpr - m 4 ,0,

    to get to final words i have to go back a page and select it from the
    index.
    Otherwise thx for the review.
    It`s good 2 see anandtech review budget boards :)
    a lot of us outside the US use them.
    I have an asrock 7s41gx that I got for my son and it`s bin rock solid for a year not one hassle from day 1
    I know that a lotta ppl rubbish them but no worries here.

    tanekaha
  • Cygni - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    When this chipset and its accompanying reference board circulated the review sites a few months ago, i made the prediction that while clearly faster than most of the competition (at the tiime it was), it would never see the widespread use of the SiS735... and it wouldnt crack the boardmakers open enough to get sales.

    Unfortunatly, it looks like i was right. This is a never ending battle for SiS. They produce a chipset that is as good or better than the rest of the competition... and then it just sits there on the shelf. Or gets used on 1 or 2 low end boards only sold in China. Its really an awful problem. If this chipset had found a partner back when the first review samples hit the net, it would have gained a fair share of marketplace... but now it is months behind, facing different opposition like the excellent ULi chipset, much updated and tweaked Nforce4 Ultra boards, and SLI boards like the K8N Neo4 and AN8-SLI on the $100 border.

    I hope SiS can fix this problem in the future... it really sucks to see excellent chipsets ignored.
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I have also been very frustrated to review an excellent SiS chipset and then never see anything but bottom-dwelling boards appear. It was particularly embarassing to me to give the SiS chipset an Editor's Choice in the past and then have no major manufacturer produce a board with that chipset.

    However, I have learned that SiS is not blameless in this deilemma. About a year ago SiS lost their foundry, so they have to contract chip production these days. This makes reliable production schedules extremely difficult for SiS, which scares many potential manufacturers. Several mfgs also told me they loved the SiS chipset, but that they could not get consistent, reliable product from SiS either before or after the foundry went. I was told failure rates on the SiS chipset were much higher than the competition. One also confided that it cost the company MUCH more to use a SiS chipset, even though it was cheap, because they ended up doing the chipset QA while they were building boards - that features were not reliably tested by SiS before shipment.

    All of this is hearsay, of course, but I've heard it from so many different manufacturers that I have to believe that many of these complaints have a basis in fact.

  • postler - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I've been using SIS based mainbords since release of the 735 chipset, so I waited to get my hand on the first SIS756 based chipset.

    I got a µATX Asrock 939S56-M last week. The board is attractively priced, well laid out, easy to install, very stable and fast...
    Since I don't very much care about overclocking, the choice for me was obvious, though there are a few overclocking options in the bios (multiplier setup, modest over voltage settings for cpu and ram etc.) that look promising to get a few extra mhz. Another big advantage is that the board doesn't require a northbridge fan.

    The board looks much more solid impression than the Nforce4 based Foxconn NF4K8MC-RS I owned and had a lot of problems with before (the board only worked for about a month and then blew up).
  • Tujan - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Im guessing that the premise is if the board runs well on a CPU at any speed and stumps them,then it should run a higher grade CPU and stump them." hmmm..

    Not finding that the X2s are actually stated as being able to be used on these newer AMD chispet MBs. While the reviews are full of information. A major question of the MB is will it run the AMD X2s from a default manufacturers configured curcuit board.Major Major question...left off.[ ]

    What happen to the Saphire board in the gaming benchmarks here [ ] . Was there a barn burner or something that wouldn't sync with the results . ? Or is that the 'secret,the secret of holding to another review/article sometime. Incidently I haven't seen a Sapphire in the retail anywhere from a web search or otherwise for a retailer. Hope this isn't one of those Asus situation where a board is only winning 'over-there (Hi ya Europe). Everything Ive seen on the web is somewhere in a landing in the far east with the boards,and central europe.

    .........See ya Mr.Fink.// dont know if I'll be able to reply to this cause don't really understand the layout of this new forum interface that well.

  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    We have tested and reported Athlon64 X2 compatability in EVERY recent motherboard review, including this one. From p.6, Test Setup:

    "SiS claims full Athlon64 X2 compatibility on their website. We were able to confirm that claim in brief operation tests with an A64 4800+. Benchmarks were run with the 4000+ 130nm A64 for benchmark comparison with other Athlon64 board reviews."

  • Tujan - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Sorry , I must've gleemed over that. I haven't seen a lot of reference to the X2s in practically 'all of the retail packaging stats. Of course it is only a recent announcement I know. Any reference to the X2 has only been that of noticing a comment from someone. Not from actual stats seen for/from them by me or from their retail statements (their boxes). Since 'how could they show being so ? My personal dilema I guess.

    Here we're doing a MB,so I'll leave it at that.

    Thanks for reply.
  • Tanclearas - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I notice you didn't even mention ActiveArmor/NAM in "Final Words" when discussing feature comparisons. This topic comes up from time-to-time in the forums (like a discussion going on over the last couple of days). Have you ever spoken to Nvidia about ActiveArmor/NAM being broken? Far too many people are experiencing problems with this hardware/software for it to be coincidence. Despite the large number of people having problems, there is little help coming from Nvidia, and definitely no acknowledgement that there are serious problems.
  • nserra - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    I always had problems with my nforce2 drivers (sound, ide....) i thought i was unlucky.

    I have also had problem with VIA drivers. Intel some times...

    With SIS and ULI never had problems.
  • Spacecomber - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Just to add a quick footnote to this, in the recent review of the Sun X2100 server, it stood out in my reading of the article that although Sun was using a nforce4 ultra chipset for the motherboard, active armor had been disabled.

    I had thought that perhaps the issues with active armor were those that eventually could be addressed with a driver update, but 6 months later, this is looking less likely.

    Space
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Yeah, after hearing in an earlier comments section here about all the problems with ActiveArmor and checking on the relevant forums, I decided against it. Then I found that nVidia's IDE/SATA drivers are also notorious, and for me they made it impossible to load Windows after installing, so I have to unselect them when installing the chipset driver and just stick with the standadrd Windows ones. That's with the 6.66 driver that was the latest when I last checked.

    nVidia really need to sort their chipset drivers out, they may make good hardware but that is useless if the software to make it works is bug-ridden.
  • nserra - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Well always criticizing about the mobos doesn’t do more than 220Mhz/230Mhz, but when do you test this?

    When I will see some nforce3 Ultra/ULi M1695 doing 300Mhz or more on Sempron(2600+/2800+)/Athlon(3000+) to test how good are they for overclocking?

    I mean this AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) Socket 939 is useless to know this (i think).

    When i will see a 2600 sempron going from 1.6Ghz go to 2.6Ghz? Or Athlon 1.8Ghz going 2.4Ghz or more.

    How good are this new mobos that can do 400Mhz like Uli? I mean I need more HTT speed to overclock more right?

    1.6Ghz (200Mhz) vs 2.4Ghz (300Mhz) vs [3.2Ghz (400Mhz)|Impossible]

    Only Xbit does real OC tests on the web, not just theorical ones?
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    The 4000+ we use for testing OC is known to OC as high as 245 on some motherboards. Our test memory has gone as high as 318 at 1:1 on some motherboards, by lowering the CPU multiplier. If there are other factors, like no memory voltage adjustments, we will also lower the memory divider (and performance) to determine the highest clock frequency OC. By lowering the memory ratio our CPU/memory has done as high as 400 Clock frequency on some boards. With this envelope of known OC values with this CPU and memory we test each motherboard we review. This provides real information on overclocking capabilities COMPARED to other motherboards.

    A "review" with just one set of numbers, whether overclocking or benchmarks, is nothing more than an advertisement. A REVIEW requires comparison of the SAME EXACT TESTS on two or more boards, IMO. Picking memory ratios out of the air for OC tests will generate high OC numbers, but those numbers tell you nothing about overclocking performance compared to other boards.
  • nserra - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    OK. I though you would need an FX processor to do that.
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    All Athlon64 processors are unlocked DOWN (below the rated multiplier). On a 4000+, 12X is the stock multiplier, but you can select 12x, 11x, 10x, 9x, 8X on if the motherboard supports multipliers (and almost all A64 motherboards do). The FX is unlocked UP and DOWN , so you can also select higher multipliers like 13x, 14x, etc. with an FX53 which also runs at 12x like the 4000+.

    The down unlock is really a by-product of Cool'n'Quiet, as AMD implements cool'n'quiet as a drop to lower multipliers when overheating occurs.
  • Palek - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    On page 5 in the memory stress testing section:

    "This points to SiS having a poorer front end to the ATI on-chip memory controller than either nForce4 or ATI Rx480."

    That should be AMD on-chip memory controller.
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    How right you are. Corrected . . .
  • Furen - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Horrible... I guess all those 300+HTT mobos have me spoiled.
  • hermitthefrog - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    It just makes me wonder because the average person who normally buys an off-the-shelf doesn't care if it is a socket 754 or 939 or whatever, as these things don't mean much except to the gamers and power users that would typically build their own systems. SiS usually seems to cater to the OEM systems where the PC manufacturer is more concerned about a price point and basic performance and the end-user doesn't care what chipset is in his machine. All he cares about is probably "Well it a Pentium 4 or it is 3000 mhz" or whatever because this is obvious. So if SiS is going to bother to make a chipset to compete with the NForce 4 they should realize what makes the NForce 4 so popular- ever since the NForce2, gamers and the like have associated Nforce with top performance and cutting edge features. And obviously the Nforce 4 is better than the Nforce 2 or 3! I know some of my friends and I who used to have Athlon XP's and Nforce 2 based boards would naturally love to get our hands on the latest and greatest Nforce 4/Athlon 64 systems because to us it is a sure thing and it has a cool name to boot. Meanwhile ATI and SiS and VIA all have cryptic chipset names that don't elicit an emotional response like the "NForce" did. I guess the point I am trying to make is that Nvidia's competitors are not as marketable, and the products aren't as "edgy or daring" sounding and this is why they are all getting trounced sales-wise (production and design and availability problems ahem non-withstanding) and the fact that Nvidia actually delivers when they say they will. I am not a fan boy but this is all obvious from watching for the couple years.
  • ceefka - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    Plus you'd be hardpressed to find the features of the nF4 on another chipset. While SiS, ATI, VIA and ULi may be getting there, they offer just about nothing that you can't get from an nF4.
  • hermitthefrog - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    but i didn't read the article yet, im a loser

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