SiS 756: PCI Express for AMD Socket 939

The SiS Chipset Family

To provide answers to our questions, we started with a closer look at the current family of SiS chipsets. SiS provides chipset for both Intel and AMD processors that support PCI Express. Both chipsets are composed of separate North and South bridges. The SiS Intel family consists of 4 north bridges: the 649, 649FX, 656, and 656FX.

All four SiS Intel chipsets support PCI Express and are pin compatible (interchangeable). The latest 656FX is the first to support 1066FSB, dual core, and EM64T.

SiS Northbridges for AMD are identified as 7xx, and a similar family of chipsets is available from SiS for target markets from Value to Performance.

The most recent SiS chipset for AMD is the 756, which is the first SiS AMD chipset to support PCI Express. 756 also fully supports X2 dual-core AMD processors.

The SiS PCIe Northbridges support the PCIe x16 Graphics port, while the Southbridge supplies the remaining PCIe ports. Any of the Intel or AMD PCI Express Northbridges can be combined with one of four current SiS Southbridges that provide different feature sets. These south bridges are the 965, 965L, 966, and 966L.

Product Name	SiS965	SiS965L	SiS966	SiS966L
NB/SB Interconnection Type:	MuTIOL® 1G	MuTIOL® 1G	MuTIOL® 1G	MuTIOL® 1G
Bandwidth:	1GB/s	1GB/s	1GB/s	1GB/s
Data Bus Speed:	533MHz	533MHz	533MHz	533MHz
PCI Express/Ports:	PCIe x1/ 2	PCIe x1/ 2	PCIe x1/ 2	PCIe x1/ 2
Serial ATA/ Ports:	SATA150/ 4	SATA150/ 2	SATA150 AHCI/4	SATA150 AHCI/2
Parallel ATA/ Devices:	ATA133/4	ATA133/4	ATA133/4	ATA133/4
RAID	0,1,0+1,JBOD	0,1, JBOD	0,1,0+1,JBOD	0,1, JBOD
USB/ Ports:	2.0/ 8	2.0/ 8	2.0/ 8	2.0/ 8
PCI/ Devices:	2.3/6	2.3/6	2.3/6	2.3/6
LAN:	10/100/1000Mb/s	10/100Mb/s	10/100/1000Mb/s	10/100Mb/s
Audio:	AC'97	AC'97	AC'97/HDA	AC'97/HDA
SiS PCI Serial ATA Solution:	SiS180	SiS180	SiS180	SiS180

The number difference reflects Audio, with the 965 supporting AC'97 and the 966 supporting High-Definition (Azalia) audio or AC'97. The "L" designates lower cost and fewer features, like native 10/100 LAN instead of Gigabit LAN, and fewer SATA ports.