Introduction

If there were one thing the AMD platform has been missing lately many would agree that keyword would be competition. Among gamers and enthusiasts, there’s really only been one clear choice: NVIDIA’s nForce2 chipset. Since its debut at the end of last year, the nForce2 chipset has been winning the hearts and minds of AMD owners for its unique combination of features and outstanding performance. Even AMD realizes this -- their last three processor launches have all involved the nForce2 platform.

As a result, the biggest decision an AMD user has faced the past seven months hasn’t been debating over which chipset to build their system around, but which nForce2 motherboard to purchase. The competition hasn’t been sitting on their laurels however.

VIA has been tweaking, and then re-tweaking its KT400A chipset. We were originally told by motherboard manufacturers to expect the first crop of KT400A boards in late December ’02. Then when December came, we were told February. Of course, by the time February hit we were no longer asking about KT400A, in fact we were asking all the manufacturers without nForce2 boards why they didn’t have an nForce2 board! (It was all rather comical actually.)

By the time we received our first retail KT400A board it was April and AMD’s Athlon XP 3200+ with 400MHz bus was right around the corner. Performance of the chipset was good, but not great. VIA had improved its performance over KT400, but still fell short of the mark NVIDIA had set with nForce2 months ago. But the worst part of it all was the fact that KT600 was just months away, making the situation similar to the KT266-becomes-KT266A debacle all over again.

SiS hasn’t fared much better than VIA as of late. Since their 735 chipset took the Socket A world by storm a few years ago, a lot of their focus has shifted to their chipsets for the Pentium 4 platform. Up until VIA was granted a Pentium 4 bus license, SiS was the only real alternative to Intel’s core-logic; in fact they beat Intel to market with DDR memory support and have rapidly adopted the latest technologies.

On the Socket A platform their SiS735 follow-up, SiS745, was actually adopted by a wider number of motherboard manufacturers, making it in some ways a better success than 735, but it was always regarded as a value product.

SiS746 and SiS746FX suffered a similar fate, only motherboards based on these chipsets were only offered for the extreme value market. We’re talking ECS and ASRock boards here folks.

SiS has one last chance to capture market share in the Socket A market before AMD moves to Athlon 64 later this year. Their entrant? SiS748. Read on to see how it stacks up to the competition!