SiS 655 *2-18-03 UPDATE* MSI, Gigabyte and ASUS Done

[AlienX]

Asus' one seems more stable than msi's and gigabyte's.
but when will it release? waiting for another month???

 

[CrispySilicon]

Ladies and Gents, I would very much like to point your attention to Ebay.com as there is now a SinXP1394 board for sale there, and though the buy it now price is insane, if ebay has it, it's gotta be out there ^^

follow the link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3402355370&category=1244

 

[deeznuts]

anyways, i've been playing with the board for a couple of hours. seems stable hardware wise. but beware the usb drivers on the CD! i don't know, but i tried to install all of them at the same time, and couldn't get back into XP for the life of me. since i am going to compare it to my 4PEA+, i couldn't risk the possible drop in numbers so i am reinstalling right now. before i tried that gung ho move, it was very fast and stable.

 

[Callesen]

The board seems to run like a dream - Have only OC'ed it to 18x145 soo far - no need to up voltages thus far.

What I'm most impressed about with the gigabyte board it the way IRQ's a re assigned to the PCI and AGP slots - I'm running a well filled system but nothing shares IRQ's except my NIC and the onboard ser/par ports controller - that's pretty amazing.

I'm a little disapointed that the voltage to the memory can only be increased with 0.1V - CPU voltage is adjustable all the way up though.

Will report back when I've spend some more time with it Dont know for sure if it's A0 or B0

 

[Conscript]

Originally posted by: CrispySilicon
Ladies and Gents, I would very much like to point your attention to Ebay.com as there is now a SinXP1394 board for sale there, and though the buy it now price is insane, if ebay has it, it's gotta be out there ^^

follow the link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3402355370&category=1244

not exactly what i would call a reputable seller, nor would I pay retail price for something on ebay when it will be available in another week or so from vendors. Doubt that seller really has one on hand...

 

[l3anzai]

Originally posted by: Schneider
If u live in Australia the 8SQ800 is $259
8SQ800 Ultra is $339
SINXP 1394 is $459
U can get them from Synnex
A bit expensive for my liking (8INXP = $569)

I'm getting my SINXP1394 for $360. I think the price list you have there are all way overpriced. Well.. at least SINXP and 8INXP are, to my knowledge. I live in Sydney and ordered from Brisbane.

 

[BobReily]

I'm not planning on overclocking (not yet anyway) - would these Springdale/Canterwood/SiS/E7500 chipsets benefit the average user or are they just for overclocking? Overclocking seems the way to go, I mean we all want speed we might as well push it to the limits.

 

[Feldenak]

Has anyone ever used motherboards.com? They apparently have the SINXP1394 for sale there but I'm kind of leery because of the abysmal rating of the place on reseller ratings.

 

[Elvis2]

Well, my SQ800 just arrived from Newegg . Time to go to work. Kinda wished I held off on installing that watercooling rig...

 

[CrispySilicon]

Originally posted by: Feldenak
Has anyone ever used motherboards.com? They apparently have the SINXP1394 for sale there but I'm kind of leery because of the abysmal rating of the place on reseller ratings.

Bah, just called them and "Do you currently have this item in stock?" "Not at the moment but we should be getting them in early next week."

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: Elvis2
Well, my SQ800 just arrived from Newegg . Time to go to work. Kinda wished I held off on installing that watercooling rig...

looking forward to these results ~ please post a thread?

 

[Feldenak]

For those of you still looking for one, newegg has SINXP1394 Ultra2 in stock for $230.

 

[frangus]

Originally posted by: Feldenak
For those of you still looking for one, newegg has SINXP1394 Ultra2 in stock for $230.

I wonder if these are the newer B0 or A0

 

[Feldenak]

Originally posted by: frangus

Originally posted by: Feldenak
For those of you still looking for one, newegg has SINXP1394 Ultra2 in stock for $230.

I wonder if these are the newer B0 or A0

I'll let you know in a day or 2.

 

[zShowtimez]

Im in your group Feldenak.. just ordered the SINXP1394 Ultra2. Ill keep you peeps updated.

 

[ArborBarber]

NewEgg...0 in stock as of 7pm est....I guess I'll always be a day late and a dollar short!

ELVIS2....keep us posted!!!




Thugs...you didn't get one yet? I was hoping that you'd have had one by now...your pretty anal retentive about testing these newer mobos and I was looking foward to your results!

 

[ArborBarber]

I bought an Enermax EG651P-VE FMA (551W) to power my system...is there a problem using a larger PSU with the SINXP? How can that be? I'm starting to wonder about QC in Gigabyte's company...Who ever heard of such a thing as downgrading a PSU which allows the board to post? There have been two posts now that I've read stating that the PSU was to powerful for both the GA-8INXP and the GA-SINXP...

Evan, can you add any clarification to this question? Have you seen this problem? If not, could you check into it? Thanks...

 

[Elvis2]

So far performance for me seems to be on par with my Iwill P4HT (845PE) board. Obviously memory bandwidth is much greater however I haven't run any apps that have seen a significant performance gain from the improvement In some instances, performance has actually decreased. I think maybe this is a result of not being able to run as aggressive ram timing on the sis as I could on the PE.

Sandra Memory bandwidth:
133fsb
Ram Int. = 3406
Ram Float = 3406

150fsb
Ram Int. = 3687
Ram Float = 3699

PC Mark:
CPU = 6956
Mem = 7238
HDD = 1362


The most agressive timings I can run are 2,6T,3,3 on twin 256 mg sticks of Corsair CMX pc3200C2.
Enabling Performance option in the bios seems to hinder performance instead of increasing it. After enabling the performance option, system would hang at Windows XP boot screen. This even happened after reducing cas to ras to 2.5.
Board came with "F3" bios. Flash to "F4" did not produce any tangible difference in performance.
System seems quite stable so far. I will try to run Prime 95 tonight.

 

[Yozza]

Originally posted by: ArborBarber
I bought an Enermax EG651P-VE FMA (551W) to power my system...is there a problem using a larger PSU with the SINXP? How can that be? I'm starting to wonder about QC in Gigabyte's company...Who ever heard of such a thing as downgrading a PSU which allows the board to post? There have been two posts now that I've read stating that the PSU was to powerful for both the GA-8INXP and the GA-SINXP...

Evan, can you add any clarification to this question? Have you seen this problem? If not, could you check into it? Thanks...

Interesting. There shouldn't be any problem, except if the PSU is not able to provide sufficient power across certain voltage rails during the power-on. I shouldn't think you will have any problems with the Enermax EG651P. One guy I read actually managed to get his board working after switching back to a 350W Enermax from some 400+W PSU (can't remember exact details), so I can't imagine any difficulties with your 550W Enermax .

I have one myself, and it's been solid for me so far. It's served me well for 1.5 years now, and I hope it will continue to do so for a loooong time

 

[liveevil]

most apps wont improve much noticibly. Clock speed is far more important than memory bandwidith. Also sis agp driver is crap...

 

[Yozza]

Originally posted by: Elvis2
So far performance for me seems to be on par with my Iwill P4HT (845PE) board. Obviously memory bandwidth is much greater however I haven't run any apps that have seen a significant performance gain from the improvement In some instances, performance has actually decreased. I think maybe this is a result of not being able to run as aggressive ram timing on the sis as I could on the PE.

Elvis2,

What frequency are you running the RAM at? 1:1 does seem to yield performance at the level of the i845PE in many cases as shown in Evan's benchmark results, but the higher memory ratios offer better performance. I believe the default ratio is to run at 4:5? ie, DDR333.

 

[ArborBarber]

Yozza...Thanks, I thought I had made a "wise" purchase when buying the 651...from what I've read, it deliveres very accurate voltages on every rail. I'll guess we'll see...thanks for the boost to confidence...I'm starting to wonder about Gigabytes QC...I've read a couple of posts were there seems to be problems with the ATI 9700 Pro(which I'll be using), however the problems seemed to be with the GA-8INXP, now it seems that SiS has crappy AGP drivers as "liveevil" reports...

Elvis2, I guess you don't have the ATI 9700 pro? I would have liked to have seen if you were having any problems with it...

Thugs, Any hope that you'll be using the ATI 9700 pro?

 

[frangus]

Originally posted by: liveevil
most apps wont improve much noticibly. Clock speed is far more important than memory bandwidith. Also sis agp driver is crap...

What SIS AGP driver is recommended? 1.13 or 1.14?

 

[bigtoe33]

Hi guys
Prometheus over at www.asusboards.com is doing a nice review of the GA8SQ800 using a bios that i modded for the members.Check it out here.

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: Elvis2
In some instances, performance has actually decreased. I think maybe this is a result of not being able to run as aggressive ram timing on the sis as I could on the PE.

slower then a PE? :Q
thats not too good for the overclocking crowd.

i did notice that SiS655 1:1 ratio tests were waaaayyyyy behind a GBay....
which should tell you something right there.

hope ya find the magic "switch" to get her to go a bit faster

Originally posted by: ArborBarber
Thugs, Any hope that you'll be using the ATI 9700 pro?

not unless i get one for free