DFI 748-AL: First Look at SiS 748
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2003 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Test Configuration
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (400MHz FSB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 256MB Corsair PC3200 TwinX LL (v1.1 or 1.2) Modules (SPD rated) |
| Hard Drive(s): | Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM Special Edition (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | SiS AGP r1.16 & SiS IDE r2.04 NVIDIA nForce version 2.03 (1/30/03) VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.47 (May 20, 2003) |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 3.6 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | DFI 748-AL (SiS748)@200.45MHz FSB Asus A7V600 (KT600)@200.0 MHz FSB Soltek NV400-L64 (nForce2 400 SC)@ 200.5MHz FSB DFI NFII Ultra LANParty (nForce2 Ultra 400) @ 201.35 MHz FSB Gigabyte 7VT600 1394 (KT600) @ 202.78MHz FSB Gigabyte 7NNXP (nForce2 Ultra 400) @ 202.77MHz FSB Epox 8KRA2+ (KT600)@202.44MHz FSB |
All performance tests run on nForce2 400 (SC)/nForce2 Ultra 400 (DC) motherboards utilized two 256MB Corsair TwinX LL PC3200 (v1.1 or 1.2) modules set to SPD timings in DDR400 mode. Dual-Channel mode was used on nForce2 Ultra 400 boards, and 2 dimms working as Single-Channel were used on the nForce2 400 Soltek NV400-L64 board.
All performance tests that ran on the KT600-based motherboards used two 256MB Corsair TwinX LL PC3200 (v1.1 or 1.2) Corsair modules in DDR400 mode. KT600 memory timings did vary slightly among the motherboards, with the Asus A7V600 requiring a Ras-to-Cas of 3 for stable operation and other KT600 boards requiring a Ras-to-Cas setting of 2. 4-bank interleave and the highest available timing option (Turbo or Ultra) was used.
Performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. The ATI 9800 PRO is the new AnandTech video card standard for reviews.
Additions to Performance Tests
Benchmark testing is dynamic, and we have added several new benchmarks to our standard Test Suite.1) ZD Labs Internet Content Creation Winstone 2003 — This benchmark has just been updated by ZD Labs and includes many new features in the Benchmark Suite, such as Media Encoding. It also uses the most up-to-date versions of Multimedia Creation software, which is rapidly changing as new software tools are released.
2) ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 — ZD Labs Business Winstone has been around for many years and is a widely quoted Benchmark for measuring system performance. It basically provides a similar benchmarking suite to Sysmark 2002 Office Productivity.
3) Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 — This demo/benchmark from Yeti Labs is one of the first DX9 game-based benchmarks available. Unlike some older benchmarks, such as Quake 3 that generate insane FPS ratings in the 300’s, we see performance numbers in the 30 to 40FPS range with current DX9 cards.
To give AnandTech readers a feel for how some of the newer benchmarks compare to the more familiar benchmarks used in past reviews, we have posted results for both the new benchmarks and Sysmark 2002, and all the games that have been a part of our standard benchmark suite.
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JAGedlion - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
... The DFI 748-AL has 5 IDE ... I see you are referring to PCI slots, can they be called IDE slots too?Anonymous User - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
wonder how far would the FSB go if the vdd was pushed into its max. i guess it would definetly go beyond 212MHz, maybe you should have decreased the multiplier.In fact, today I ran a few benchmarks with my epox 8k5a2 KT333 and reached as far as 215. pushing it further the AGP bus became bottleneck and i was using ATI's oldskool's rage128. it amazes me how come brand new hardware can't handle even 72MHz agp clock, whereas my 4 years old card handles 86MHz. in FSB200 (agp/pci 80/40) i'm not experiencing any staiblity issues burning it with prime or cpuburnK7 even 3days. odd
Anonymous User - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
One can easily see from his comment that Jeff7181 doesn't know much about these things, but still thinks he's got an argument. Anandtech crew are admirably wasting their efforts in trying to reason with such people.About the board. Two phase and no 12V connector drives me away from it just by looking at it.
About SiS. They have nice chipsets, but the motherboard makers skimp on the design because they use the SiS chipsets for another market than they do for instance with their nForce2 boards. That's unfortunate since I would rather go with SiS drivers than nVidias. Performance is often overemphasised when reliability and ease of use becomes a second thought for many buyers.
Anonymous User - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
May i make a helpful suggestion/request for the next (or even current) review? Could you please post the ranges of the bois setting instead of just the maximums? for example, instead of saying "cpu voltage in the full range, up to 1.85v" could you specify exactly what that range is? like 1.1-1.85v? I know the nForce boards can do this, but I'm unclear about 748 boards.I'm personally looking at this board for a home theater PC that I'm going to try and underclock the CPU and see if i can get it to run without a fan and still be fast enough to play DVD's... because of this, I'd like to know the minimum voltage you can run the CPU at, and I don't find that in a lot of reviews. Just that little change would satisfy the speed freaks as well as us quiet freaks.
just a suggestion...
Evan Lieb - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Jeff,As Wesley mentioned and as I said before, Epox and ASUS' nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards perform nearly exactly the same as the Gigabyte and DFI nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards (and others) we use in AMD motherboard reviews. I have both boards in my labs and have decided not to send them to Wesley for retesting because I wouldn't want to waste his time with something like that.
Again, we have tested ASUS and Epox boards before and found them to perform within about 1% of other nForce Ultra 400 motherboards. We changed our testbed and made sure a few good nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards we added for comparison to non-NVIDIA chipsets.
We may add those very popular Epox and ASUS boards to an nForce2 roundup of some type. But for a SiS 748 review like this one, the boards we used were perfectly adequate.
Dennis Travis - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Very good review Wes, keep up the great work.Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Jeff7181 -I'm asking, Jeff, that you Please give me a break. I took over AMD about 6 weeks ago, and all Athlon reviews prior to that were done by Evan. Evan has answered here, on every post you have made on every AMD review, that the performance difference for Ultra 400 versions was very small, which is why he chose NOT to review the Ultra 400 updates of the boards you mention. The results of our tests of the regular nForce2 versions of the boards you mention are in our database. We also have the two top Ultra 400 performers - the DFI NFII Ultra LANParty and Gigabyte 7NNXP with UPDATED benchmarks in our tests for your comparison. If you recall, we also changed our video cards and benchmark suite recently, and we are finally accumulating a useful database of new benchmark data.
My point, Jeff, is I do NOT have access to the motherboards you mention and cannot add them to our database. I am doing my best to provide useful information to AMD fans, but I cannot provide what you ask. My next AMD review is a Ahtlon64 Preview, and with the launch only 3 weeks away it just doesn't make good use of review time to request an Asus A7N8X Deluxe and retest it.
If you can please show a little patience we will do our best to provide the kind of information you are looking for in the future.
Thank you.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Charts are in Flash because it uses less bandwidth than any of the alternatives. With over 3300 articles and reviews on-line plus News and Forums, bandwidth is a very important subject to a site like AnandTech.Anonymous User - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Why are the charts in Flash? A simple jpg or gif would do.Jeff7181 - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Again I ask, where the hell is the comparisons to the motherboards we all know? The A7N8X Deluxe, NF-7, 8RDA+. And what's with the cheesy title? Can SIS outperform nVidia's nForce2? I could have answered that without even testing them! Geeze... what's going on at AnandTech? These reviews suck!