DFI 748-AL: First Look at SiS 748

Final Words

The DFI 748-AL is a motherboard that shows the promise of the SiS 748 chipset. It has a full selection of tweaking and overclocking options that allow the end user to get the most from the 748 chipset. This includes a full working range of multiplier ratios, which have been absent from other SiS 748 designs. The tested board was an engineering sample with an evaluation ROM, but was still remarkably stable in everything we tested. The only glaring weakness was the lack of available memory timing options, which we expect will be fixed in the release BIOS.

Even hampered by the current 2.5-4-4-8 timings at DDR400, the 748-AL still performs in the range of VIA KT600 boards. With better memory timings and setting options, it could easily out-perform the KT600 boards we have tested. However, unless there are some major miracles performed in the release BIOS, the DFI 748-AL is not likely to meet or pass the performance of the nForce2 Ultra 400 Athlon motherboards. We did not test hard-disk I/O, but SiS has performed very well in that area with recent chipsets. We suspect that benchmarks which heavily weight disk I/O, like Futuremark’s PCMark2002, will show much closer performance of the nForce2 Ultra 400 and the SiS 748 chipsets than we have found in our testing.

It is likely that DFI will have effective memory control options in the release BIOS, which will definitely improve performance. We also hope there is a way to add a “Fixed PCI/AGP” option to the final BIOS. It is available in other SiS chipsets, so we suspect it may be an option that DFI can incorporate in the final 748 BIOS. For the wish list, an increase of available FSB options from 232 to 250 would also be useful.

We commend DFI for their efforts to bring a full-featured SiS 748 design to market. With the market rolling with the nForce2 snowball, it must be a difficult decision whether to introduce a board like the 748-AL. There is much to like in the SiS 748, and it is certainly a worthwhile product. In the end, we don’t know if that will make much difference, since it does not win the performance crown from nForce2. At it's selling price, the DFI 748-AL is an excellent choice with many unique features provided by the SiS 748 chipset.