NVIDIA, SiS and VIA Bring on Chipsets for AMD Socket 939

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ManufacturerNVIDIASiSVIA
NorthbridgenForce3 Ultra755FXK8T800 Pro
CPU SupportAthlon 64 & FXSempronAthlon 64 & FXSempronAthlon 64 & FXSempron
Socket SupportSocket 754, 939Socket 754, 939Socket 754, 939
HyperTransport800 MHz, 1 GHz800 MHz, 1 GHz800 MHz, 1 GHz
Graphics InterfaceAGP 3.0 / 8XAGP 3.0 / 8XAGP 3.0 / 8X
ArchitectureSingle ChipTwo ChipTwo Chip
Chip Interconnect-MuTIOL1066 MB/sUltra V-Link1066 MB/s
Southbridge-SiS964/965VT8237, VT8251
PCI6x 32 Bit PCI 2.36x 32 Bit PCI 2.36x 32 Bit PCI 2.3
AudioAC97 2.17.1-ChannelAC97 2.3AC97 2.3 (VIA Vinyl 6-Channel)PCI Audio (Vinyl 8-Channel)
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit Ethernet+ NVIDIA FirewallMII 100 MBit/sIntegrated 100 MbitDedicated VIA Velocity Gigabit
Storage2x UltraATA/1334x SATA-1502x UltraATA/1332x SATA-1502x UltraATA/1332x SATA-150
RAID SupportMode 0, 1, 0+1RAID 0, 1, JBODMode 0, 1, JBOD
USB8x USB 2.08x USB 2.08x USB 2.0

The MSI board with VIA chipset would not run at exactly 2,400 MHz, which means we were working at a slightly elevated rate of 2,411 MHz.

To maintain comparable values for all the boards, we increased the clock speed of the NVIDIA and SiS chipsets so that CPU-Z reported the two running at 2,412 MHz. With the memory, we had to do without the ideal timings of CL 2.0-2-2-5 because it didn’t work with the SiS board - the Aquamark crashed several times with this setting. This was not the case with the reference board - SiS certainly didn’t have the extreme Corsair modules available. We decided to use CL2.0-3-2-6, which can now be attained with high-value modules from other manufacturers.