Memory performance
One of the key determinants of chipset performance is the memory controller in the north bridge chip. Sandra's bandwidth tests measure one of the key elements for memory performance.

Paired with DDR400, the SiS 648 screams ahead of other DDR solutions and even outruns the 850E chipset with PC800 RDRAM. Only PC1066 RDRAM is faster.

Of course, we're only measuring one aspect of memory performance here. (I'm currently pondering a new memory latency test.) Our real-world tests will stress the chipsets' memory controllers in different ways.

Business Winstone

The SiS 648 shows up very strong in Business Winstone, bested only by the PC1066 RDRAM solution and Intel's 845G chipset, which has always done especially well in this test. Interestingly enough, the gap between the top and bottom spots here is over 10 points.

Content Creation Winstone

Yet again, the 648 is near the top, both with and without DDR400 memory.

LAME MP3 encoding

Obviously, chipsets don't make a great deal of difference during MP3 encoding.