Feature Articles

SiS672FX - Budget for Budget's Sake

By Zachary Chan - 5 Aug 2007

Test Setup

Test Setup

For this benchmarking segment, we compare the SiS672FX against two of Intel's contemporary IGP chipsets, the older 945G Express featuring the GMA950 and the newer G965 that comes with the GMA X3000 graphics core. Also, in an effort to have a more direct memory controller comparison for single channel performance, we will run a second set of benchmarks on the Intel G965 with forced single channel operation. Because the Intel G965 board forces similar memory timings as the SiS672FX, its single and dual channel memory results will be a good gauge on mainstream desktop performance today.


SiS672FX Reference Platform

  • Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (2.93GHz)
  • 2 x 1GB AENEON XTUNE DDR2-800 @ 5-5-15 CAS 4.0
  • SiS Mirage 3+ 256MB – with SiS 3.81 drivers
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • SiS AHCI 4.11a driver set
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)


Intel G965 and 945G Reference Platforms

  • Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (2.93GHz)
  • 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 5-5-15 CAS 5.0 (G965 only)
  • 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 @ 4-4-12 CAS 4.0 (945G only)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • Intel GMA X3000 (DVMT 256MB) - with beta drivers 6.14.10.4764 (G965 only)
  • Intel GMA950 (DVMT 256MB) - with beta drivers 14.25.0.4666 (945G only)
  • Intel INF 8.1.1.1001 and AHCI 6.1.0.1022 driver set
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (and DirectX 9.0c)


Additional Notes

  • Both the SiS672FX and our G965 reference motherboards have limited memory timing options, forcing the boards to run at their SPD timings, which at DDR2-800 is 5-5-5-15. The SiS672FX is set to CAS 4.0 however, in an effort to compensate however slightly for its single-channel controller.
  • Due to system instability running Kingston HyperX memory at DDR2-800 with the default voltage, the benchmarks for the SiS672FX will be conducted with AENEON XTUNE DDR2-1066 memory downclocked to DDR2-800.


Benchmarks

The following benchmarks will be run to determine the performance potential of the SiS672FX chipset:-

  • BAPco SYSmark 2004
  • Futuremark PCMark05
  • SPECviewperf 9.0
  • Futuremark 3DMark06
  • AquaMark3
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