SIS735 Chipset

The SIS735 is the first DDR-compatible Athlon chipset from Silicon Integrated Systems.  As with the previously reviewed SIS730 chipset, the 735 is a single-chip solution aimed at lowering manufacturing costs as compared to standard two-chip solutions, such as VIA's KT266.  The integrated design also offers another significant advantage, as both the northbridge and southbridge controllers can utilize a high-speed, low-latency interconnect bus since both are housed within the same die.  The internal multi-threaded bus operates at full chipset speed, thus the I/O transfer rate can reach nearly 1.2 GB per second.  This is an impressive rating, as even VIA's latest V-Link bus can only offer a peak 266 MB per second interconnect rate.  The SIS735 also offers simultaneous concurrent transactions, while V-Link operates in a singular access manner.  The performance advantage is tremendous, as the SIS735 drives the entire PCI bus to its maximum operational limits.