ASUS P4SDX Deluxe (SiS 655)

ASUS P4SDX Deluxe: Stress Testing

The P4SDX had some pretty decent stress testing potential, mostly because it's based on a dual channel chipset (SiS 655), which is a more complex and difficult chipset to implement (due to signal integrity, among other issues) than the conventional single channel DDR chipsets that dominate today's market. Still, we managed to test this board in several different areas and configurations, including:

1. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 333MHz and 400MHz in dual DDR operation at the most aggressive timings possible.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results

We will update this section with our FSB overclocking stress test results once we receive the new revision of the P4SDX.

Memory Stress Test Results

This first memory stress test tests how well the P4SDX is able to handle the rated speed of dual DDR333 that SiS has officially validated the 655 chipset for. This should be a breeze for any motherboard that claims to be dual channel DDR333 compatible, though results will vary of course. Anyway, here were the timings we were able to achieve at the following settings:

These are absolutely delightful DRAM timings to be able to achieve with four modules running at CAS2/2T/6T/2T in Turbo mode. No one is going to complain about these types of memory results. However, it's interesting to note that the P4SDX suffers from the same "issue" as Gigabyte's SINXP1394 (SiS 655) motherboard; both boards are unable to achieve anything faster than CAS2/2T/6T/2T. We're starting to suspect it's a chipset "issue", though either way it makes no difference in performance so we aren't going to fret over it too much.

What will be (and should be) much more challenging for ASUS P4SDX is operating while four memory modules are installed at 400MHz with dual channel mode enabled. SiS does not support dual DDR400 operation, as they've only validated dual DDR333. However, we saw that both the MSI 655 Max and Gigabyte SINXP1394 were able to pass our stress testing in dual DDR400 mode with four modules installed, so we won't be too surprised if the ASUS P4SDX is able to achieve a similar feat. Here were our results:

Once again, an SiS 655 motherboard is able to reliably operate in dual DDR400 mode with all memory banks occupied. This is an enormous step forward for SiS, as they have not only put together yet another fast, feature-filled Pentium 4 chipset but one that is capable of something only NVIDIA has been able to get close to accomplishing; stable dual channel DDR400 performance.

As usual, we ran several memory stress tests and general apps to make sure all these timings were stable. We started off by running Prime95 torture tests; a grand total of 24 hours of Prime95 was successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. Neither stress test was able to bring the P4SDX to its knees.