SiS 648FX comes out in time as a cheaper alternative to the Springdale series of P4 boards. In terms of performance, we have seen that the SIS 648FX has even overtaken the Springdale in some of the benchmark tests. In fact, considering the FSB of the ref board of 200.1Mhz with 200.9 (FIC), 203Mhz (EPoX) on Springdale boards, the SiS 648FX together with the ABIT BH7 (i845PE) proves that performance of dual channel can be reached even with a good Single Channel design.

Paired up with SiS IDE driver 2.04 which seems to boost the disk access performance. It shows marvellous performance in disk related desktop applications in the CCWS and BWS benchmark. This is to be expected as the older 645DX and 648 has already display very good disk access scores. In terms of 3D applications, the difference between the 3 chipsets - 865PE, 845PE and 648FX is not very apparent too.

In most of the implementations of the SIS 648FX boards, the SiS 180 SATA RAID chipset should be onboard. As we have mentioned before this SiS180 RAID chipset offers pretty good RAID 0 performance at a lower cost. You can also hook up to 2 IDE devices and 2 SATA on board to SIS 180 and 4 IDE through SIS 963L. IDE RAID is also possible with SiS180.

In conclusion, we find that boards based on this chipset should be cheaper than Springdale. Not only can you save on this, you can save on the purchasing a pair of DIMMs. Instead of purchasing 2 x 256M, you just need to purchase 1 x 512M. We would highly recommend boards based on this chipset for those who are tight on budget but need a reliable P4 platform that performs on par with existing P4 desktop chipset.

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