SiS, ASUSTeK and Samsung Electronics today announced intention to jointly bring SiS659 core-logic solution to the market. All three companies position this second RDRAM chipset developed by Silicon Integrated Systems for performance computing and multimedia gaming markets later this year or in early 2004.

SiS R659 core-logic is designed to support four-channel RDRAM PC1200. The R659 North Bridge is able to provide up to 9.60GB/s of memory bandwidth thanks to the four-channel memory controller with PC1200 RDRAM support. The chipset also includes architectural enhancements for higher performance through faster response time. In total SiS’ R659 supports up to 16GB of memory. Even the forthcoming Pentium 4 CPUs with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus require just 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth. The R659 North Bridge will be coupled with the SiS964 I/O controller, which integrates 8 USB 2.0 ports and Serial ATA-150 features. Samples of the SiSR659 are scheduled to come in the third quarter 2003.

We already told you in late January that the prospects of the R659 are not clear (see this news-story), present announcement only confirms this, as ASUS seems to be the only mainboard company to be interested in such solution. Moreover, ASUS itself has not made any promises in regards possible mainboards to utilise the R659.