OCWorkbench - SiS 771/966 Reference Board Review Intro 1/5

SiS makes a come back with the release of its SIS 771/966 chipsets for the AM2 platform. The SiS771, a HyperTransportTM to PCI Express / MuTIOL® Bridge with SiS MirageTM3 GPU, integrates a high performance HyperTransportTM interface for AMD AthlonTM 64 processor family, 16 lanes of PCI Express interface, SiS MirageTM3 3D/2D/Video/MPEG graphics processor, and SiS MuTIOL® Technology, which connects with SiS966 MuTIOL® Media IO.

The integrated SiS MirageTM3 GPU features a DX9 Shader Model 2.0 dual pixel shading pipelines, a 128 bit 2D graphics engine, a Video Scaler/De-interlacer, a slice layer MPEG2 accelerator, Motion Compensation, and a High Definition Video Link (Muxed on PCI Express bus) to support the TV-out & HD digital flat panel.

MirageTM3 GPU also features Fence instruction and a built-in DMA blit engine for Vista basic scheduling model to support Vista Aero. For cost-effective the PC system, the SiS771, adopting the UMA (Unified Memory Architecture), eliminates the need of the costly frame buffer memory by organizing the frame buffer into the system memory from programming the system BIOS. SiS771 can support up to 256MB display memory from sharing system memory.

The SiS 771 is built based on 0.13um while the SiS 966 is 0.15um. Will SiS 771/966 be the chipset of choice for lower cost, low power consumption, better image quality and higher performance ? We will go find out through the review by comparing it boards built with NV 6100/410 and a ATi RS5485/SB460 chipsets.

Specifications

SiS HyperStreaming™ Technology Empowered

HyperTransport™ Host Interface
- Supports AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core processor
- Supports AMD Athlon™ 64 FX, Athlon™ 64, and Sempron™ processor
- HyperTransport™ compliant bus driver with auto compensation capability
- HyperTransport™ Technology up to 2000MT/s bandwidth

PCI Express Graphics Interface
- PCI Express base Spec. 1.0a compliant
- Supports PCI Express base frequency 2.5GHz, and bandwidth per pair of 250MB/s
- Supports the maximum bandwidth, 4GB/s of each direction in x16 configuration

Integrated Mirage™ 3 Graphics Engine
- DirectX 9 complaint
- Supports High Definition Video interface for TV or LCD display

Share Memory Size: 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB

High throughout MuTIOL® Connect interfaced to SiS966L MuTIOL® Media I/O
- Proprietary interconnect between SiS771 and SiS966L
- Bi-Directional 16 bit Data Bus at 533MHz operating frequency

SiS966L PCI Express MuTIOL® 1G Media I/O

SiS MuTIOL® 1G Delivering 1GB/s Bandwidth
- Proprietary Interconnect between SiS north bridge and SiS966
- Bi-Directional 16 bit Data Bus at 533MHz Operating Frequency
Integrated PCI Express Controller
- Supports two PCI Express x1 ports
Integrated Serial Host Controller
- Provides 2 independent ports for SATA, compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 Specification with transfer rate 150MB/s
- Provides hardware support for AHCI
- Supports RAID 0, 1, and JBOD
USB 2.0/1.1 Host Controller
- One EHCI USB 2.0 Controller and 2 OHCI USB 1.1 Controllers
- Supports Total 8 USB 2.0/1.1 Ports
- Supports USB 2.0 High-Speed Device @480 Mb/s Transfer Rates
Audio - Supports 8 Channels High Definition Audio / AC'97
Fast Ethernet / Home Networking Controller with MII Interface
- Supports 10 /100 Base-T Ethernet
Advanced Power Management:ACPI 1.0b and APM 1.2 Compliant
Dual IDE Channels with ATA 133/100
Support Up to 6 PCI Masters
LPC 1.1 Interface
Integrated Keyboard/PS2 Mouse Controller