Asus P4S800D-E Deluxe & Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra: SiS 655TX Challenges Intel's Best
by Wesley Fink on December 9, 2003 1:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
In the months before Intel introduced the 800FSB Pentium 4 processors, the hottest boards on the market were not those based on Intel 845. They were motherboards based on the SiS 655 chipset. You may recall that one of these, the famous Gigabyte SINXP, was the first board at AnandTech to reach 800FSB before the 800FSB 'C' Pentium 4's were introduced. While it seems like ages since the SINXP was the hottest Intel board around, it was only in March 2003 that Anand pushed the SINXP to 800FSB to provide a preview of the 800FSB P4 processors.
When Intel introduced their 875/865 800FSB chipsets, everyone expected SiS to capitalize quickly on the success of the 655 chipset with the addition of 800FSB, but it just didn't happen when expected. We took a look at the first successor with real 800FSB and Hyperthreading support, called the SiS 655FX, in September. That Gigabyte 8S655FX Ultra was an interesting board, but the performance was not up to Intel 865/875 standards and overclocking was less than stellar.
Apparently, SiS and the manufacturers producing SiS chipset boards were discouraged by reviews because we began hearing about a 655TX chipset that would update the performance of the FX chipset. Now, almost 2-1/2 months later, the 655TX is starting to ship, and we have both the Asus 8S800D-E Deluxe and the Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra in for testing.
Asus and Gigabyte are two of the largest motherboard manufacturers in the marketplace, but they are also the two who have historically produced the best SiS chipset boards for Intel. For that reason, we decided that a head-to-head comparison would be the best way to answer your questions about the new SiS 655TX chipset boards. With the updated TX chipset, does SiS finally have a chipset that is competitive with Intel 875/865 — or maybe even better?
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WhoBeDaPlaya - Friday, April 23, 2004 - link
LOL swt - wish I got paid for the reviews I write :Pswt - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Having bought the P4S800E, I can correct a couple of misimpressions.First, the passive heatsink on the NB isn't so large as to interfere with my Zalman CNPS-7000Cu. Other mondo coolers might be problematic, of course.
And the AMI BIOS now supports multiple CPU Core settings, all the way up to 1.9V. Since I don't get paid to write such reviews, I'm not going to type in the details - but the BIOS that shipped with the MB *has* been updated in that regard, as promised.
buzzby311 - Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - link
buzzby311 - Tuesday, December 30, 2003 - link
All of the current memory reviews talk about memory that is great for the 865 875 chipsets. What memory would be good for overclocking on this motherboard with an Intel 3.0GHz 800FSB HT processor?Wesley Fink - Monday, December 15, 2003 - link
Asus says the P4S800D-E will appear on their web site on Friday, December 19, 2003. They expect the boards to be available for sale in the US by January 1.ColdRolledSteel - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
I also would like to know when the P4S800D-E is coming out. It isn't listed anywhere, including on the usa.asus.com website....Wesley Fink - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
Spacecomber -We normally check FSB and report those that are out of spec. With these 3 boards all are within 0.5MHz of 200. The Asus P4S800D-E is 200.1, and both Gigabyte 8S655TX Ultra and Asus P4C800-E are at 200.5. If numbers are way off we correct them to 200 (800) before running benchmarks if possible.
Spacecomber - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
Unless I missed it, did you check to make sure no one was cheating a bit with their front side bus speed? Is a 200 MHz frontside bus really a 200 MHz frontside bus for all three boards that you compared?Thx
Space
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
#14 - All our Benchmark tests on the 655TX boards were done with an ATI 9800 PRO with Fast Writes enabled, so there does not not seem to be a general problem with ATI cards.valnar - Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - link
#3Why would I want to give up that?