DOS Days

SiS

SiS are a motherboard and graphics chipset manufacturer for PC compatibles.

To jump down to their graphics chipsets section, click here.

Motherboard Chipsets

 

85C310/320/330 "Rabbit"

The SiS 85C310 chipset was used in 80386-based systems. It supported interleaved DRAM for faster memory access.

85C360

The SiS 85C360 was an 80386DX single-chip chipset.

85C431 / 85C420 / 85C411 / 85C406 / 85C405

The 85C411/406 was an EISA chipset for 386 and 486 motherboards.

Award BIOS Chipset code: 154I5

85C460 / 85C461

Award BIOS Chipset code: 2C4I7

This is a 386DX and 486 single-chip chipset.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

ASUS ISA-486SV2
WETK3167 (AMD Am386DX-40)
Chaintech 486SCSL

 

85C471 / 85C471B / 85C471E

This is a 1994 486 chipset that supports level 1 write-back cache (if using a Pentium Overdrive 83).
Award BIOS Chipset codes: 214I8 (non-E) or 2C4I8 or 2C4I9 (B) or 214I9 (E)

It supports the following CPUs:

  • Intel 80486SX, DX, SL Enhanced, and DX2
  • Intel P24D/P24T/P24C
  • Cyrix Cx486S2 (M6/M7)
  • AMD Am486DXL/DXL2

Images: Socket 3 VLB Motherboard

Click here for the datasheet for the 471.

Motherboards known to use this chipset include:

  • Abit AB-AG4
  • SiS 486SLE M103, a.k.a. "IPC Family Magic"

85C496, 85C497

Supports level 1 write-back cache.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:
Soyo SY-4SAW
Asus PVI-486SP3
Lucky Star LS-486E

Click here for the datasheet for the 496/497.

501/502/503

In 1994, the Pentium era had dawned, and the first Intel chipsets to support it like the 430LX were uninspiring and very slow. The SiS 501 by contrast was just about the best chipset on the market. It supported EDO RAM and had a decent integrated single-channel IDE controller.

SiS weren't the first to market a non-Intel Pentium chipset - that title went the UMC, but the UMC chipset was a hybrid, and not great. Essentially a 486 chipset with cache and memory controller connected to half the 64-bit processor bus of the Pentium. It's performance was even worse than the Intel 430LX.

So if you're looking for a decent early Pentium era chipset, SiS 501/502/503 is the one to have.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

Asus PCI/I-P54SP4
Elitegroup SI54P-AIO
Elitegroup SI5PI-AIO

 

5511 / 5512

Introduced in 1995, SiS 5511 chipset supports Front Side Bus speeds up to 66 MHz. With this chipset you can set the cache to Write-Through (WT, and can cache up to 128 MB of RAM (unheard of in 1995, but for retro fans today this is a nice feature!). This chipset competed against the Intel 430FX, which had a slight edge over the SiS in raw memory performance.

The 5511 could run the PCI bus asynchronously from the FSB, so it could remain running at 33 MHz with a boosted FSB. Supports UMA (shared memory between CPU and VGA controller) with a separate optional SiS 6202 or 6205 VGA chip on the motherboard.
16 MB/s PIO4 IDE.
PCI 2.0 specification.

It's not a speed demon of a chipset, so look elsewhere if you're after the fastest Socket 7 chipset (check out ALi's Aladdin V or VIA's MVP3 for those).

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

5571 / 5572 - Trinity

SiS Trinity chipset supports Front Side Bus speeds up to 75 MHz. It was a direct competitor to the Intel i430HX chipset.
Supports both the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM as well as the newer/faster EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM. Maximum 384 MB. Maximum cacheable RAM is 64 MB.
16 MB/s PIO4 IDE.
PCI 2.0 specification.

 

5581 / 5582 - Jessie

Front Side Bus speeds up to 83 MHz.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, the newer/faster BEDO and EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM, and SDRAM. Maximum 512 MB. Maximum cacheable RAM increased to 128 MB.
UDMA-33 IDE.
PCI 2.1 specification.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

 

5591 / 5595 - David

Front Side Bus speeds up to 95 MHz.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, the newer/faster BEDO and EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM, and SDRAM. Maximum 768 MB. Maximum cacheable RAM increased to 256 MB.
PCI 2.1 specification.
AGP support.
UDMA-33 IDE.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

  • MTech R581A
  • PC Chips M590

5596 / 5513 - Genesis

Front Side Bus speeds up to 75 MHz. This was basically a 5571 with integrated SiS 6205 VGA controller.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, as well as the newer/faster EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM. Maximum 384 MB. Maximum cacheable RAM increased to 64 MB. General performance still not amazing compared to other competitors around at the time. Often paired with Cyrix CPU motherboards.
PCI 2.0 specification.
16 MB/s PIO4 IDE.
Integrated SiS 620x PCI core via UMA.

 

5598 / 5597 - Jedi

Front Side Bus speeds up to 75 MHz.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, as well as the newer/faster EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM and SDRAM. Maximum 384 MB. Maximum cacheable RAM increased to 128 MB.
PCI 2.1 specification.
UDMA-33 IDE.
Integrated SiS 6326 PCI core via UMA.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

530 / 5595

Front Side Bus speeds up to 100 MHz.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, as well as the newer/faster EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM and SDRAM. Maximum 768 MB.
PCI 2.2 specification.
UDMA-66 IDE.
Integrated SiS 6326 AGP core via UMA.

Motherboards that use this chipset are:

540

Front Side Bus speeds up to 100 MHz.
Supports the older FPM (Fast Page Mode) RAM, as well as the newer/faster EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM and SDRAM. Maximum 768 MB.
PCI 2.2 specification.
UDMA-66 IDE.
Integrated SiS 305 AGP core via UMA.

 

Graphics Chipsets

6202

Introduced: 1995
Memory: 2 MB

Used on the following PCI SVGA cards:

 

6215

Introduced: 1997
Memory: 1 MB (expandable to 2 MB)

Used on the following PCI SVGA cards:

  • ACorp ST-6215B

More Images

6326

Introduced: June 1997
Memory: 4 MB or 8 MB
Interface: PCI and AGI 2x
RAMDAC: 24-bit (TruColor) for 2D, 16-bit max. for 3D.
RAMDAC Clock: 175 MHz

The 6326 was aimed to be a cost-effective 3D chip for board manufacturers, but still offering a good spec sheet. It had decent MPEG2 hardware decoding, Gouraud shading, bilinear and trilinear filtering, Z-buffering, fogging and more.

Sold in large quantities, and with performance only just a bit better than the very poor-performing S3 ViRGE/GX2, and the ATi Rage II+DVD. It had poor quality drivers, a slow core clock which ran at 80 MHz and EDO memory that ran at 50 MHz.

No OpenGL driver and support for Direct3D came too late.

A DVD version was released that added TV-out and MacroVision encoding/decoding.

The SiS 6326 came in a number of revisions (etched on bottom-right row of the chip markings), including C1 (limited to 4 MB of video RAM and has broken perspective correction, does not use system RAM for texturing), and C3 ( limited to 4 MB of video RAM), C5 (can address up to 8 MB of video RAM, fixed perspective issues), D1 and D3 (DVD variants only), and H0.

Used on the following cards: