# New SiS 648 Motherboard

## Darth_Daver

I am putting together a new Pentium 4 system.  I've decided that the SiS 648 chipset with DDR333 or DDR400 RAM is best for me.  I like the chipset features such as serial ATA, ATA133, IEEE 1394a firewire, USB 2, and AGP 8x.  I am looking at the Shuttle AS45, Gigabyte 8SG667, Abit SR7-8X, and MSI 648 Max-F or -L because they all received favorable reviews on Anandtech.  I'd seriously consider an ASUS, if one is available.

Does anyone have good or bad experiences with this chipset, these models of motherboard, or these vendors (running Linux, of course).  I will probably buy a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 to replace my aging GeForce 2 MX for UT 2003.  I'm going to a computer show tomorrow so prompt feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

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## Wallalai

 *Darth_Daver wrote:*   

> I am putting together a new Pentium 4 system.  I've decided that the SiS 648 chipset with DDR333 or DDR400 RAM is best for me.  I like the chipset features such as serial ATA, ATA133, IEEE 1394a firewire, USB 2, and AGP 8x.  I am looking at the Shuttle AS45, Gigabyte 8SG667, Abit SR7-8X, and MSI 648 Max-F or -L because they all received favorable reviews on Anandtech.  I'd seriously consider an ASUS, if one is available.
> 
> Does anyone have good or bad experiences with this chipset, these models of motherboard, or these vendors (running Linux, of course).  I will probably buy a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 to replace my aging GeForce 2 MX for UT 2003.  I'm going to a computer show tomorrow so prompt feedback is greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thank you.

 

Hi,

Since one month now, I'm trying to my LAN (rtl8139) connection on a Gericom 1stSupersonic Per4mance equipped with a SiS650 chipset.

I've tried almost five different distros and everytime the same problem.

Cannot ping out of the laptop.

I think I'll have to apply the ACPI patch to resolve an IRQ conflict .  :Confused: 

Hope this will help.

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## ben

 *Darth_Daver wrote:*   

> I am putting together a new Pentium 4 system.  I've decided that the SiS 648 chipset with DDR333 or DDR400 RAM is best for me.  I like the chipset features such as serial ATA, ATA133, IEEE 1394a firewire, USB 2, and AGP 8x.  I am looking at the Shuttle AS45, Gigabyte 8SG667, Abit SR7-8X, and MSI 648 Max-F or -L because they all received favorable reviews on Anandtech.  I'd seriously consider an ASUS, if one is available.
> 
> Thank you.

 

I just put my first DIY P4 with a AS45GT/R motherboard. Basically I am quite happy with it. BUT the AGP port is drived by a specifically nonsupported SIS chip 5591/5592. SO NO DRI, you've benn warned.

Oh I got a panic at bootup time as long as I have APIC enabled in BIOS.

Hope this help

Ben

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## Darth_Daver

Thanks for the feedback, ben.  That is helpful.  I think that something I run has complained about the lack of DRI, when I didn't have it enabled.  It was either VMWare or WineX.  Both are important to me so that could be bad.  Lack of APIC would be annoying.

I suspect that would also be a problem with the ASUS board using the same chipset.  ASUS is releasing the P4PE soon.  It is based on the i845PE chipset.  Maybe I would have more luck with that since it is an Intel chipset (stable) with some heritage (the original i845 is about a year old).

Thoughts on DRI or any of this, anyone?

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## jkozak

I have just installed 1.4rc1 on a P4PE.  Painless install except for the 82801 lack of DMA (much discussed elsewhere) and ALSA (not going yet).  

I previous tried a P4S8X, the ASUS SiS648 board, which was DOA; a trawl of the newsgroups suggests this is rather common.

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## Darth_Daver

jkozak,

    You stated that you had a painless installation of Gentoo 1.4rc-1 on an ASUS P4PE.  I have been attempting the same for a couple of weeks without luck.  I believe my problems may be related to issues with the IDE controller, perhaps DMA related.  I was wondering if you could give me some more information about how you completed your installation.  When I attempt to disable DMA, I get an error message, and mke2fs of large partitions (80 GB Maxtor ATA133), extensive file copying, and kernel compiling makes my system crash.

  Can you offer some guidance?

Thanks...

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## Darth_Daver

jkozak,

    You stated that you had a painless installation of Gentoo 1.4rc-1 on an ASUS P4PE.  I have been attempting the same for a couple of weeks without luck.  I believe my problems may be related to issues with the IDE controller, perhaps DMA related.  I was wondering if you could give me some more information about how you completed your installation.  When I attempt to disable DMA, I get an error message, and mke2fs of large partitions (80 GB Maxtor ATA133), extensive file copying, and kernel compiling makes my system crash.

  Can you offer some guidance?

Thanks...

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## Darth_Daver

Network difficulties.  Don't I get credit for each post?   :Smile: 

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## jkozak

darth_daver:

sorry - just noticed your post.  

Are you using the boring old IDE ports or the exciting new ones?  I used the former, and installation was uneventful.  The only fiddly disk-related bit was that DMA was off initially and wouldn't turn on (this is much discussed elsewhere), which is fixable in 2.4.19 kernels via a patch; after applying this all was fine.

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## Darth_Daver

Unfortunately, at least two bad things happened to me at the same time.  First, my new ASUS P4PE motherboard was defective.  Since I ordered a slew of new hardware at once, including Corsair 400 MHz DDR RAM exceeding the boards 333 MHz spec, it took me a while to pinpoint the problem.  The new board came in last night, and it appears to have fixed the stability problem.

The second problem appears to have been caused by Portage being temporarily broken by one of its updates.  It was posted somewhere that they had to back out the change.  Before that, I had been reading other people posting the same emerge problems I was seeing.

Getting hit by both at the same time was confusing, but I think everything is in order now.  I plan on doing a fresh install of 1.4 rc2 this weekend.  I assume everything will go well now, but I may post here again, if it is not.

Thanks.

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## upnix

FWIW I've had bad luck with MSI motherboards and the expereince has been bad enough that I'd never buy another MSI board.

First board I got would reboot itself a couple of times before refusing to boot at all. After which you'd have to wait a good day before it'd boot again. Returned that board for the exact same kind and had problems for a couple of months with freezing and rebooting (maybe twice a week).

However, those problems seem to have fixed themselves becoming less frequent to the point that they've stopped all together.

The board was a version 1 board using the VIA 694XDP chipset. While I had these problems, searching Google showed I was by no means the only one with a bad MSI motherboard.

Chris

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## crweb

Here are some forums to look at based on the Sis 648 motherboard.

I love my board, I got the Abit SR7-8x,  but read these first!

Gentoo SIS problems

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=29041&highlight=

Same as above only install directions

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=29040&highlight=

Just more info on problems with kernel

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=27665&highlight=

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