Performance Test Configuration

 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz)
AMD Athlon64 FX51 (2.2GHz)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz, 400MHz FSB)
Intel Pentium 4 at 3.2GHz (800FSB)
RAM: 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II
2 x 512MB Mushkin ECC Registered PC3200
Hard Drive(s): Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8Mb Buffer)
Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA (8Mb buffer)
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: SiS 1.17a AGP/IDE 2.04/RAID 1.03
VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.49 (August 20, 2003)
NVIDIA nForce version 2.45 (7/29/2003)
Video Card(s): ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X)
Video Drivers: ATI Catalyst 3.8
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards: SiS755 Reference Board
Abit KV8-MAX3 @ 204.3FSB
Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 Athlon64 FX51
ChaintechZNF3-150 (nForce3) Athlon64 3200+
MSI K8T Neo (VIA K8T800) Athlon64 3200+
DFI NFII Ultra (nForce2 U400) Barton 3200+
Asus P4C800-E (Intel 875P) 3.2Ghz P4

The Athlon64 FX requires Registered or Registered ECC memory. Tests with the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 were therefore performed with Mushkin High Performance Registered ECC DDR400 memory. Recent performance tests on Athlon64, nForce2 Ultra 400 and Intel 875/865 boards used 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II Double-bank memory.

All performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32.
For the fairest comparisons, benchmarks were recompiled for the Asus P4C800-E using a 3.2GHz Pentium4 processor.

Additions to Performance Tests

We have standardized on ZD Labs Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 and ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 for system benchmarking. Science Mark 2 Memory Performance, 9/23/03 update, was included to compare Memory Bandwidth and Latency of the Athlon64, Athlon64 FX51, and Pentium 4 3.2GHz.

Game Benchmarks

We have added Aquamark 3 and Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 for Direct X 9 from Yeti Labs, and X2 Benchmark, which includes Transform and Lighting effects, to our standard game benchmarks. In the near future, we will be adding other benchmarks from the AnandTech Video Card Game Suite.

SiS755 Reference Board: Stress Testing Content Creation, General Usage and Memory Performance
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  • Googer - Thursday, December 16, 2004 - link

    Lets Bench IT!
  • MoronBasher - Saturday, December 6, 2003 - link

    I have a sis 746, and 735 and i can't wait for this chipset to come out!!!
  • mason - Thursday, November 27, 2003 - link

    Great review!
    Two things -
    1. The SIS reference board is almost always the fastest performing board with that particular chipset. I think it's premature to label it a winner until you can find a decent performing production board.
    2. SIS has been making great chipsets for the Athlon since the 735, only no one knew about them because they typically ran second to VIA in memory banddwidth, which was what all the major review sites cared about. The HDD performance and overclocking headroom on the 735 and 745 both outclassed the VIA boards (KT266, KT266A, KT333) of the day, but they were hard to find and few manufacturers made anything better than cut-rate boards.
    The MSI 745 Ultra and the Leadtek 735 board were possibly the best of the early generation SIS athlon boards.

    The current SIS748 chipset for the athlon 400FSB is actually very good, though again slightly slower than the KT600 is memory bandwidth.
    I just wish major sites would review the few boards that do use these chipsets, so we could start seeing higher quality boards like the DFI 748.
  • destaccado - Thursday, November 27, 2003 - link

    buy now.....asus k8v is an awesome board, in 2 months you might as well wait another two months, and another.....
  • jeeptreker - Wednesday, November 26, 2003 - link

    Purchase timing is my concern. I'm considering the AMD 64 3200+ & the Chaintech ZNF-150 w/ nForce3-150 chipset for Christmas. Am I on the edge of a change? If I wait a month or 2 will the AMD 64 3400+ and SIS755 or nForce3-250 chipsets be out? If these items won't be out for 6 mos. then I'll just be chasing technology.
    Buy now or wait? Any suggestions will be appreciated.
  • Gimpus - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link

    When should we expect motherboards based on the SiS755 chipset to reach retail chanels?
  • NFS4 - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link

    I'll wait til I see the performance of shipping boards before I jump ship...reference boards tend to be "tweaked" in some case. I'm currently lovin' my VIA K8T800 based Asus K8V Deluxe.
  • justly - Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - link

    "To our surprise, SiS755 also provided the best performance in AnandTech benchmarks of any Athlon64 chipset that we have tested."

    Did this realy surprise Anandtech? it didn't surprise me.
    For quite some time SiS southbridge chips have proven to be well designed, in fact whenever disk preformance was tested SiS has had some of the best scores. The main problem SiS has had in the past was with the performance of their memory controller. So it would only make sence that when the memory controller is no longer a concern, as it is with the Athlon 64, SiS would be able to show of its southbridge performance.

    Other than your surprise about the performance I thought it was a good article. I hope Anandtech doesn't ignore future SiS (or ALi) AMD solutions like it has in the past with socket "A".
  • Pumpkinierre - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link

    I noticed your description of the erratic booting/stability behavior when overclocking which is similar to overclocking problems described in the ipkonfig article-today's AT news post:http://www.ipkonfig.com/Articles/AMDCastrated/Page... .
    Is this due to data corruption in the HT link as a result of CPU speed being linked to the HT link speed?
  • HammerFan - Monday, November 24, 2003 - link

    I think performance will be influenced most by how "streamlined" everything in the chipset is (i.e. IDE drivers at maximum performance, things such as LAN and RAID taken off of the PCI bus and put on the Southbridge).

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