by Anton Shilov
07/01/2003 | 04:11 PM
Silicon Integrated Systems introduced today another chipset for value personal computers. The SiS661 inherited most of its features from the SiS648FX, thus, can offer performance suitable for basic needs, but cannot boast with speeds comparable to performance mainstream or high-end solutions.
<%BANNER[article]%>SiS661FX core-logic supports processors with 400, 533 and 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, and the Hyper-Threading technology, including the upcoming Prescott CPUs. Just like its discrete brother, it boasts with single-channel PC3200 DDR SDRAM and external AGP 8x. SiS648FX is paired with SiS963L South Bridge, which provides MuTIOL 1G technology, USB 2.0/1.1, Dual ATA-133/100/66/33 IDE channels, 6-channel AC’97 audio, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, Home PNA2.0 and so on. Unfortunately, there are no indications about more advanced I/O controller for SiS661FX.
SiS’ Real256E graphics core integrated into SiS661FX chipset is based on old SiS315 architecture is and definitely not a performance champ at all. The graphics core 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.
Because integrated chipsets are not really popular in the clone sector, the target market for SiS’ novelty is system integrators dealing with low-cost computers. The main advantage of the 661FX chipset is definitely its very low price point that will hardly be beaten by the rivals. On the other hand, its performance will not be high and vendors, who build PCs based on powerful Intel Pentium 4 processors with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus will think a lot before incorporating such core-logic from SiS.
Mass production of SiS661FX will commence in August 2003. Mainboards adopting the SiS661FX chipset will be available in the market in September 2003.