Sis655/963 or Intel E7205?

[ehedlund]

Which chipset to choose and why? Why is what is important since personal preferences don't help me much, unless coupled with good reasons.

I had decided to go with the Sis655/963 chip until I was told today at the computerstore I was going to order from that they thought I should go with Intel E7205 since the Sis chip, I was told, had a history of getting into conflicts with graphics cards, memory and whatever. Not sure what they meant with conflicts and what these conflicts resulted in but they thought it was a real bad idea to go with Sis. Is this in Sis's history? Isn't this 655 chip so new it shouldn't have had the time to get a history yet?

Anyway, I decided to go with what the salesperson told me but now when I got home I checked the specs for the E7205 and found out it doesn't support DDR400 as the Sis chip but only DDR266, which isn't what I want.

So now I'm real troubled what to pick, please help me!!

-Erik

 

[Javic]

I can't tell you the grand differences between the two chipsets, but its always possible that the store can't get the SiS655 and was trying to sell you something that they CAN get, so you don't spend your money somewhere else?

Never rule out the dodgy salesperson factor. You did right by coming here and asking first. I'm sure Crashman will give you a more than adequate response

 

[LumberJack]

I have an E7205 and I'm happy with it. Unless your gonna overclock there is not much need to having higher bandwidth than your CPU FSB...

To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[ehedlund]

Yeah, I try not to trust salespersons until I checked the facts myself but he had both chipsets in stock and still suggested the E7205 over the Sis655 i was set on getting. Everything seems ok with the E7205 except for only supporting DDR266. But is Sis655 really asking for trouble?

-Erik

 

[jlanka]

since the Sis chip, I was told, had a history of getting into conflicts with graphics cards, memory and whatever.

the 655 boards have only been on the market for a few weeks, not sure what they mean by "history"

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[howiec]

I just bought the Gigabyte 8SQ800 mb and two Kingston 512 meg DDR 333 ValueRam modules w/ a P4 2.53 GHz CPU.

I am running the RAM in Single 128-bit mode of course and unfortunately (I wanted cas 2.0T w/ 5T,2T,2T), the best memory settings w/ these modules (they were around $65 each) are: CAS 2.0T w/ 5T,3T,3T although that's not too shabby for what I payed for.

Mem bandwidth score in SiSoft-Sandra 2k3 under winxp-pro was around 3300 MB/s. Enabled "top performance mode" in BIOS. Nothing overclocked (unless u consider cas 2.0 as overclocking since the RAM's rated as cas 2.5).

I'm having no problems with this chipset/cpu/os config and I built this PC w/ good price/performance in mind. I could have gone w/ a E7205 chipset but I thought I'd jus stick w/ DDR333 since I'm planning on keeping this for a while.

It's my first SiS based PC, prior PC was a 440BX chipset. Everything is running rock stable and pretty fast if u ask me, so I have no complaints.

I basically thought $100 cheaper mb = more money for RAM (DDR333 vs DDR266). Yes the BUS/RAM are asynch in this case but I think I'll be keeping 1 gig of ram for a while and 266 probly won't cut it l8r - hopefully 333 will last longer.

Hope this helps, and if anyone else has an equivalent setup w/ diff mem timings, pls post mem-bandwidth/perf benchmarks.

ps - I also installed the SiS drivers.

 

[LumberJack]

My GA-8INXP mobo with Granite bay is running just as howiec above described. I get the same type of bandwidth but no ram issues. I'm running crucial at 2-5-2-2 with 1T command cycle and perfectly stable...

To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[Mephistopheles]

There is no noteworthy difference in performance between granite bay and SiS655. Don´t be fooled by the number after "DDR", because it really doesn´t represent, in the end, that much of a performance boost. For some numbers, you could try reading the latest review from tomshardware, or even anandtech.

Oh, and intel does have more of a reputation in building solid chipsets than SiS. Also consider that Granite bay is a transition to Springdale/Canterwood, which´ll come into play within the next two months.