Chipsets?

In general, would it be better to get an Intel chipset over SiS? Gut instinct (and past experience with P3 boards) tells me to stick to Intel because I've been disappointed in the past with memory bandwidth and AGP performance of some of the others, is this still the case? Of course I know that there are many models of chipsets in each mfg and I don't know anything about any of the current ones so any input would help me a lot. i'm looking at the Asus X-series P4 boards with either SIS 648/963 or the Intel 845PE/ICH4

In general, yes, Intel boards are superior to SiS ones. Performance, features and reliability are all better in the former.

As for current boards- that SiS one isn't very good; there were some posts in the Intel section that showed it doesn't offer sufficient overclocking options, for example. On the other hand, the 845 board is a bit dated. It's not terrible, but you could do better by looking for a 865PE based board- these are essentially the top performing boards and do not cost an arm and a leg.

thx for the info Fizz...I looked a bit more and found that the P4S8X-X has better overclocking options than the 533-X series. Same SIS chipset but it has asynch AGP/PCI settings and 1mhz increments from 100mhz-166mhz for FSB. Since my first post its obvious my current rig is in its final death throes (blasted Abit board) and had to get something up and running ASAP, on the cheap, cheap. For $64 US I couldn't pass it up. Hopefully I'll have a 3.0Ghz or so overclocked Celeron to get me by for a few months. I was dissappointed with the Via chipset in my current rig, and at the time SIS was a bit worse performance wise so I am a little leery of SIS I guess. Hopefully they've gotten better.

Oh well if it is for a budget/stopgap rig, there is no need to worry. It won't really shine, but it's a lot better than the old pre-Ghz system. But don't forget to buy a real Overclocking Machine in the near future!

It depends on what CPU you plan to use. If you need a CHEAP mobo and plan to use FSB400 CPU (P4 Northwood A or Northwood Celeron), then definitely go for Asus P4SDX or Aopen AX45-4D Max - these are dual channel DDR mobos, capable running dualchannel DDR400 or even higher. The SiS655 has a bit lower AGP performance than the i865 boards, but the price is lower too. And there can be people who don't care about AGP performance, like me, for instance.

Here in my country the Asus P4SDX is available for about $80 (AOpen AX45-4D Max costs a mere $73), while the cheapest i865PE board, I was able to find, the Biostar P4TSE, costs $105, and an average price for i865PE boards is about $140 here in Czech republic.

SiS655 boards are suitable for FSB533 P4s too, but in this case, the headroom for OC will be less, for the following reasons:

1. SiS655 is certified to run at a maximum 133MHz clock, so how much it will go over this boundary, is rather a lottery, not the guaranteed feature. According to reviews available on the web, it is able to reach around 160MHz stable. But for FSB533 CPUs with a low multiplier (2.26 or 2.4B) it is rather a poor clock increase.
2. Both of the mentioned boards have just 2-phase VRMs. In case that you have an excellent OCable CPU (some like larva's 1.8A is), it can happen, that CPU and chipset would be able to work stable at say 185 MHz, but the VRMs will not be able to supply them by the necessary current.
3. As the SiS655 chipset is certified for only 100 and 133 MHz clock, it probably do not have other than 0,33 and 0,25 FSBCI ratio. Which, in case of increasing the clock over about 160 MHz, most probably leads to instability of PCI/AGP devices. The FSB/PCI lock option seems to have some problems on both of these boards, but maybe I will be able to give you more detailed info later, I plan to buy one of them.

For a 800FSB P4, the SiS655 is definitely a poor choice, if you plan to use an 800FSB P4, then go for some i685PE board, or SiS655FX or an oncoming SiS655TX based board. Even for the FSB533 P4 it is better to pick something other than SiS655 board.

Here is the short characteristics of Asus P4SDX:

– Clock gen.range: 100-200 MHz, 1 MHz steps
– Vcore range: default + 0.2 V, 0.025 V steps
– VRMs: 2 phase :-(
– VDIMM range: 2.5 - 2.8 V, 0.1 V steps
– Available FSB:RAM multipliers (clock over 133 Mhz): 1, 1.25, 1.33, 1.5
– Detailed memory settings in BIOS
– integrated 100Mbps LAN and soundcard

AOpen AX45-4D Max is similar, but differs in the following ways:
– Clock generator up to 248, anyhow, it is probably unusable
– Max. Vcore 1.85 V
– VDIMM range: 2.5 - 2.7 V, 0.05 V steps
– Available FSB:RAM ratios (probably in the whole clock range): 1.125, 1.2, 1.25, 1.33, 1.5, 1.66, 2
– integrated FireWire controller

There was a "Deluxe" version of Asus P4SDX board, which, besides rich set of added features, have 3 phase VRMs, so it should be more stable while OC'd. But on the other side, it has a maximum clock of 166 MHz. Anyhow, as far as I know, they are not produced anymore.

There are another two SiS655 boards I have found, but do not want neither of them. The MSI 655 Max FISR (I can get one for about $86) is a well feature packed mobo (gigaLAN, SATA, RAID, FireWire), but have one significant drawback: maximum Vcore only 1.6V, which is too little for the CPU I plan to buy (Northwood 1.8A). And finally, the Gigabyte SINXP1394 (very similar to MSI) has a maximum VDIMM voltage of 2.6V.

Anyhow, if you choose to go with SiS (probably for price reason), go with 655 or 655FX (the FX it is not such cheap), but not with 648. I don't say that 648 is bad, but for the same price you can get 655 (dualchannel) SiS chipset. And even if you insert just one memory module (until you can afford second one), you can use it in a sigle channel mode. It just will be slower (will perform absolutely the same as SiS648), but wil work. Once you insert the second memory module, you not just increase the size of memory, but you increase the performance too. Of course, that the better result you will get when both modules will be the same. I mean not just the same marketing brand, but same chips too.

Wow thanks for the good info. Unfortunately I had already ordered the P4S8X-X. I'll likely get an 800mhz board anyway within a year or less so I'll just play around with this in the meantime. So far I've managed 3.2GHz stable with the celly 2.2 I got at the same time and I spent so little $$ that I won't feel too bad ripping it apart for a P4C system in the spring Thanks again!