SiS 730S Socket-A Chipset: Is the Duron allowed to succeed now?

There are three different classes we can place SPECviewperf’s benchmarks into, those that are heavily video card, memory or CPU dependent.  This particular comparison is specifically exploiting those benchmarks that are heavily dependent on memory performance since all of the platforms here use the same CPU (with the exception of the i815 platform that uses a Pentium III and the two PC2100 platforms which use a 266MHz FSB Athlon processor). 

SPECviewperf is split into a total of 6 viewsets, each of which measure performance that is representative of usage patterns under certain professional 3D applications such as MCAD and other visualization applications.

The Awadvs-04 viewset is obviously very influenced by a fast memory controller.  Not necessarily memory bandwidth dependent as the AMD 760 is only 3% faster than the VIA KT133, but the performance here is dependent on fast memory timings.  Unfortunately it is also here that the SiS 730S falls back the furthest when compared to the KT133 which happens to be 12% faster here. 

The DX-06 viewset paints an even worse picture for SiS as the performance delta extends to close to 24% in this scientific data visualization/analysis test.  Remember that these two platforms (KT133 & 730S) are identically configured, the only difference being the actual chipsets themselves and of course the motherboards.

The Design Review viewset (DRV-07) is a 3D modeling benchmark that specifically addresses performance when modeling structural elements including piping, beams, etc…  Again, the 730S comes out approximately 20% slower than the KT133.  Luckily for SiS’ sake, the 730S is directed at the value PC market.  However if VIA could ship their KM133 which will use the same memory controller as the KT133, SiS could be in quite a bit of trouble.

First we start off with the MedMCAD-01 test which exemplifies performance under MCAD applications such as Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks.  Again the KT133 comes out noticeably faster than the 730S, a 16% lead this time. 

In fact, the closest the 730S comes to the KT133 in performance here is under ProCDRS-03 with an 11% performance differential. 

While the 730S obviously targeted at this market there isn’t a reason why it shouldn’t be offering performance closer to that of the KT133.  We aren’t even testing the integrated video in this case, when paired with a GeForce2 GTS there is no reason that the SiS 730S should be this much slower than the KT133. 

This just helps illustrate what having more experience with the platform can give a manufacturer, keep in mind that this is SiS’ first attempt at an Athlon chipset while VIA has already had quite a bit of experience not only with the memory controller used in the KT133 but with Athlon chipsets in general.