AOpen announced their mainboard powered by the only “legal” “non-Intel” dual-channel DDR SDRAM supporting chipset, SiS655. Although they do not say when they will be able to start supplying the AX45-4D Max, the formal announcement means that there will be, at least, three mainboard makers to support SiS with their high-performance Pentium 4 intended chipset. I remind you that ECS and ASUSTeK have already announced and showcased their SiS655-based solutions (see this and this news-stories).

Let us take a look at a bit more in-depth specifications of the novelty:

• Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533MHz FSB with 3.06GHz clock-speed and above;
• Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled;
• SiS655 chipset, including SiS963 South-Bridge;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2100 or PC2700 (533MHz FSB) DDR-SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs;
• 5 PCI slots, 1 CNR and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 integrated controller;
• Serial ATA-150/ATA-133 RAID controller from Promise, supporting two Serial ATA ports and two ATA-133 ports;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• FireWire (IEEE1394) support;
• 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Realtek;
• 6-channel audio solution from Realtek;
• Lots of additional functions, including technologies like Dr Voice II, Dr LED Debug Tool (optional), EzWinFlash BIOS, JukeBox CD player, Vivid BIOS, EzRestore, SilentTek, SilentBIOS è EzWin Flash;
• Overclocking functions, FSB settings up to 992MHz Quad Pumped Bus;
• ATX Form Factor.

Unfortunately, no word about price and actual availability on the market. In fact, it concerns all SiS655-based products because at this time only Intel’s i850E and E7205 can offer the highest performance with the Pentium 4 processors. A rival would be fine, however, the rival should offer comparable performance with these two platforms.

Keep in mind that current revision of the SiS655 does not support the Hyper-Threading technology and there is no official word about its support in future revisions (see this news-story). All in all, if you happen to purchase a SiS655-based mainboard, keep your eyes open and be informed.