Even though Athlon 64 processors are just around the corner, the most of chips supplied by AMD later this year will still be for the Socket A and appropriate infrastructure; as a result, it still makes sense for chipset and mainboard companies to unveil new products for Athlon XP microprocessors. Silicon Integrated Systems announced today its SiS741, an integrated version of the SiS748 core-logic released earlier this year.

The specifications of the newcomer are very obvious and not really exciting at all:

• Supports all Socket A Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron processors with 200, 266, 333 and 400MHz EV-6 system bus;
• SiS741 North Bridge can be accompanied by SiS964 I/O Controller;
• AGP 8x slot;
• SiS Real256E graphics core.
• Up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM;
• HyperStreaming technology support;
• SiS MuTIOL 1G architecture to connect North and South Bridges.

SiS Real256E graphics core is based on DirectX 7-class SiS315 architecture and incorporates 2 pixel rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs on each one. The core is clocked at 200MHz and is able to work with 32-64MB frame-buffer utilising SMA architecture. Additionally, Real256E is bundled with 333MHz RAMDAC, NTSC/PAL TV-Out and Digital Interface support for various types of monitors.

SiS741 is basically the last and final chipset from SiS for Athlon XP platform and we should not expect anything more for the good-old K7 architecture from this core-logic designer. VIA Technologies, on the other hand, may soon release an updated version of its integrated UniChrome KM400 that does not support 400MHz FSB in case there is a market for such kind products.

Mainboard makers already have samples of SiS741 at hands and we should expect the actual mainboard products to come in September.