by Anton Shilov
01/07/2003 | 11:18 AM
Silicon Integrated Systems today introduced SiS746FX, its latest Socket A core logic. Of course, the new chipset is basically a “pseudo”-new one as it derives from the never released massively SiS746. There are only two differences between the old product and the new one: 333MHz system bus support and DDR400 memory support.
Apart from the fashionable AGP 8x support, the SiS746FX is paired with the South Bridge SiS963L, which provides MuTIOL 1G technology, USB 2.0/1.1, Dual ATA133/100/66/33 IDE channels, 5.1 Channel AC’97 Audio, 10/100Mb Ethernet, Home PNA2.0 and so on.<%BANNER[article]%>
The Hsinchu, Taiwan-based chipset developer boasts with advanced features of the product without telling us that they came with these features almost five months later than VIA Technologies and about two or three months after NVIDIA had started to sell their nForce2. At the moment VIA KT400 is amazingly accepted by the market, while nForce2 offers great performance. Moreover, VIA will improve its KT400 later this quarter when they roll out the updated KT400A.
Only Elitegroup Computer Systems presented their SiS746 powered mainboard last year (see this news-story), and there were no more companies to adopt the chipset. Since the market of the Socket A intended core logic products will tumble later this year, mainboard makers will try to consolidate their product lines and it seems that there will be almost no place for SiS746FX, unless it offers higher performance compared to VIA KT400/400A.