- The VIA PT880 and SiS 655FX Chipsets

The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the performance of VIA's PT880 and SIS's 655FX dual-channel chipsets to see how they compare up against Intel's 875P as well as an Athlon 64 platform. They've also gone so far as to test the USB 2.0, Ethernet, and Disk I/O transfer rates. The full review over here.

Now comes the encore. Both VIA and SiS have prepped their dual-channel memory controllers, and both chipsets are now at rough feature parity with Intel. The Intel competition hasn't sat still, however. Last time around, we used Intel's own typically tame motherboards to test the 865PE and 875P chipsets. This time out, we're using Abit's spicy IC7-G, a tricked-out enthusiast's mobo with playing-for-keeps performance. And we've cut out the stock 865PE chipset, because all the decent enthusiast's boards these days have BIOS options that enable internal memory controller timings entirely similar to the 875P's Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT), erasing the most notable distinction between the 865PE and 875P.

To make things even more interesting, we've blindsided our contestants with a series of I/O and south bridge tests, measuring everything from USB 2.0 transfer rates to Ethernet performance and CPU overhead.

Are Taiwan's "twin dragons" finally ready to take on the chipsets Intel
launched back in April? Well, only one way to find out...

- Articles and Reviews from around the Web

- DirectX Next Early Preview @ Beyond 3D
- Configuring and Maintaining a WASTE Network @ Icrontic
- The Intel Pentium 4C Vs. AMD Barton Comparison @ Rojak Pot
- AMD's 2004 Strategy @ Overclockers