DFI 748-AL: First Look at SiS 748
by Wesley Fink on August 30, 2003 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
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.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
enough with the athlon xp mobos lets see some athlon 64age that you where talkin about wesley.Jeff7181 - Wednesday, September 3, 2003 - link
Anonymous User = afraid to show who he really is.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 2, 2003 - link
Jeff7181 = Simpleton, limited comperhension skills.sprockkets - Monday, September 1, 2003 - link
The unusual thing is why the 748 has the 963 SB, since the upcoming 741 has the 964. That one has SATA. I would rather get that and use a video card.Well, either one can use either southbridge, but value or not, SOMEONE needs to stick SATA on a uATX board for the AMD platform.
Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link
Most Sis motherboards are aimed at the low end market and performance is often worse than in the reviews. For the guy who wants to use this for a htpc I would steer clear of these chipsets. Their performance is very poor when it comes to media encoding and video capture if you're thinking of adding tivo functionality to your htpc.Evan Lieb - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link
Anyone reading a review thinking that the boards included in the benchmark graphs are the best you can get haven't read that review in its entirety or other nForce2 reviews on AnandTech (or around the net period). We can't be faulted for what readers assume based on statements we’ve never made.Thanks for sharing your feedback with us Jeff.
Take care,
Evan
Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link
Jeff7181, the conclusion that you imagine to have seen does not exist in that article. You seem to look more at the benchmark graphs than the actual text of the article. That's your problem. Reviewers can't expect everyone to make such mistakes. I'm sure that any critisism would be appreciated if it actually had something to do with the targeted article...Anonymous User - Sunday, August 31, 2003 - link
Read this http://www.ocworkbench.com/2003/dfi/748al/748al-1.... for another opinion. It is compared to other SiS 748 and NForce2 and KT600 boards.Jeff7181 - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
Wesley, Evan... Sorry to be so rude in my post, but...The point of these reviews is to inform the reader correct? If that was an editorial (opinion) and not a review (informational) I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But the way the article is written, it leads uninformed users to believe that the best motherboard on that chart is the best motherboard you can get. While that may be true, you don't show any proof.
The review of the DFI 748-AL was great... but the product comparisons are VERY lacking. At least you could point out somewhere in the article that "the popular offerings from Asus and Epox and Abit perform similarly to the DFI nForce2 Ultra 400, but were omitted due to lack of resources." That would at least give the reader an idea of how beneficial it would be to upgrade from their current motherboard to one of these new "Ultra" ones.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link
#12 - Now corrected.