Manufacturing chipsets for AMD's Athlon XP is one thing. SiS, VIA and NVIDIA all vie for market share by focusing on different areas, be it price, performance or features. Contending with Intel in the Pentium 4 chipset market is quite a different story, though. Between the i850E, i845PE, and latest E7205 Granite Bay chipset, Intel has maintained a commanding position in the Pentium 4 chipset market. VIA has tried, with limited success, to attract attention with its P4X266 and P4X400 chipsets, but Intel has been quick to file suit, claiming VIA doesn't possess the necessary bus license. SiS does have that license though, and has received favorable reviews for its 645 chipset family.

The newest SiS flagship is its 648 Pentium 4 chipset, which incorporates support for 400/533MHz front side bus processors, includes AGP 8X compatibility and official DDR333 (unofficial DDR400) memory support. Surprisingly, boards based on the 648 core logic, are demonstrating impressive performance numbers that compare favorably to Intel's i845PE and even rival the venerable i850E. Moreover, SiS 648 boards are significantly less expensive than their Intel-based competitors. We've been kicking the ASUS - SiS 648 based P4S8X, around the lab for a while now, to see exactly what it's capable of and we've gotten some interesting results.