Once rumoured to see the light of the day in the first quarter of the year to coincisde with the launch of Microsoft Windows Vista, chipsets with built-in DirectX 10-supporting Mirage 4 graphics core from Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. are now slated to be unveiled only in the Q3 2007 or even later.
The first core-logic from SiS to support DirectX 10 and high definition video acceleration – the SiS 673 – is projected to be commercially available in the third quarter and support various processors from Intel Corp. with up to 1066MHz processor system bus (PSB). The chip will also feature dual-channel DDR2 (up to PC2-6400, 800MHz) and DDR3 memory (up to PC3-8500, 1066MHz), according to a news-story by HKEPC web-site. In addition, there will be SiS 673 FX targeting high-end of the market with support for 1333MHz PSB and dual-channel DDR2 (up to PC2-8500, 1066MHz) and DDR3 (up to PC3-10600, 1333MHz) memory, but it is unclear when the chipset is set to be available.
The unofficial information also claims that SiS plans to release SiS 772 core-logic for processors by Advanced Micro Devices, which will also feature Mirage 4 graphics with DirectX 10 capabilities and acceleration of MPEG2, H.264, VC-1 and WMV9 video codecs. The core-logic will support HyperTransport 3 with 5.20 gigatransfers per second speed.
The chipsets are expected to be produced using 80nm process technology, which means that they will have relatively low power consumption, something, which may be important for high-performance laptop computers.
It is unclear whether the new chipsets will support PCI Express 2.0 specification and/or any of the modern outputs, such as DisplayPort or HDMI.
SiS did not comment on the news-story.





