The SiS 771/966 chipset is something we have been waiting for all this while for the past 1 yr. SiS was quiet while preparing for their first DX9 compliant and VISTA BASIC ready chipset for the masses.

When it comes to integrated GPU, the most important thing is that the chipset must be cool. Using our multimeter, we measured the temperatures of the north bridge and south bridge (no heatsink required). Although the 3 platforms all exhibit around 40-45 deg. The SiS 771/966 is on the low side. Considering the fact that the south bridge do not require a heatsink, it shows how cool the temperature is. I would say that these chipsets are suitable for mobile CPUs or notebooks use since it consumes a max of 3W only.

From our point of view, this chipset has great potential as it excels in areas that most other chipset vendors overlooked. From the benchmarks itself, we can see that the performance of the board with external VGA card doesn't makes much difference as it is basically based on the memory controller embedded within the CPU. When we used the integrated Mirage 3, we found that the video display is very clear. That is so even at higher resolutions. It definitely makes it suitable for video playback. Unfortunately at this time, the HDMI interface is still under development. According to SiS, SiS provide standalone chip which they call it as video bridge. Now they have SiS307CP parts for production and will have SiS308 support HDMI in Q1'07. As seen in the HQV benchmarks, the SiS 771 video display far exceeds the quality provided by NV6100 and ATi RS485. The playing back of H.264 and WMVHD plays back smoothly too. Although it excels in 2D space, the 3D performance has lots of room for improvement. In our tests, games like FEAR couldn't even complete loading. 3Dmark05 and 06 score shows that it is still a bit far from its competitors. According to SiS, Mirage 4 will support DX10 for Vista Premium logo.

Features wise, the south bridge supports the necessary USB, HD AUDIO, SATA 1, GbE. Although we are delighted that it finally has a GbE, the South bridge still only uses SATA 1 1.5Gbp/s. I asked SiS their decision behind it and they told me that there is no performance gain from this SATA2. Other factors is cost and power consumption. The USB performance is also much better than the rest of the chipsets compared.

Overclocking wise, the HT can be maxed to 1.25GHz HT with 10x250 HT set to 1GHz. Due to the limitation of the BIOS, we are unable to go for higher HTT. With its fixed PCI/PCIe design, I think it shouldn't be a problem.

In conclusion, the board has good image quality, USB performance and runs steady with low power consumption. The only regret is the SATA1, 3D performance and BIOS functions. It seems to be limiting the true capability of the chipset. I hope that retail board's bios can allow more settings e.g. changing the ECLK of the GPU embedded, CPU CLK range can be extended.

I look forward to seeing this chipset on retail boards for my HTPC to playback high definition movies.

Pricing (US/UK)

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Pros

• Cool chipsets with low power consumption
• 7.1 HD audio
• GbE
• Good USB performance

Cons

• No SATA2
• 3D performance
• BIOS too limited

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.