Introduction

The catch-phrase on everyone's lips these days seems to be DDR333. This new DDR memory format allows both the Pentium 4 and Athlon platforms to achieve even higher performance levels; and especially in the case of the Pentium 4, it may finally provide an adequate contender to RDRAM systems. SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems) has been at the forefront of enhanced DDR chipsets, including both the AMD SiS 745 and the Pentium 4 SiS 645 models, both of which had support for DDR333.

The next evolution in SiS chipset design seems to be the 645DX, which not only includes all the enhancements of the 645, but adds a few new twists as well. In many ways, the SiS 645DX is a truly cutting-edge chipset, with a nod towards both high performance features and a more future-proof upgrade path. These are all very important aspects that we'll be examining in this review, as well as putting the performance claims to the test up against the best that Intel has to offer.