Oddly enough, the two motherboards that I have had least problems with are SiS based. FreeBSD and Linux just worked.

SiS are great for Linux. LinuxBIOS started on SiS motherboards only because they could get a lot of support from SiS at a stage in the development when this was rather helpful! They might not make their own drivers though, but to be honest, they don't need to because the support is so good in Linux and FreeBSD.

I run an nForce2 based motherboard now though, and it has been pretty good for the past 20 months.

On VIA motherboards I've had dead IDE controllers, USB controllers that randomly stopped working (VIA Epia800) and so on.

I have never had an SiS-chipset-based motherboard...honestly, I just don't pay attention to them. And don't you think those SiS model numbers are just hard to remember? Maybe I don't try to remember them at all...

I can honestly say that i've NEVER had a SiS based motherbaord that worked properly out of the box. They have ALL requried a bios update of somesorts to make htem even semi-workable. I've had boards from Asus, PC Chips, MSI, ECS, Aopen... they are all the issues that need a bios update. These boards have also been spread across many generations from P3 -> Athlon -> P4 -> A64... Luckily I know what to try to trouble shoot, but even some of the more experience PC builders I know wouldn't be able to figure out what to do. That said, once I get them working, they seem to be just peachy.

What ever happened to ALi?

Doh! bad refresh

SiS's Linux support was, is, and likely will continue to be spotty and largely sub-par. I don't *only* run Linux, but I certainly like to have the option, and Via, AMD, and Intel all have sterling Linux track records. Makes SiS a non-contender for me, FWIW.

Does SiS have any new single-chip products like the 735 was?

What I think is the most disappointing is the DX7 integrated graphics. Just when Intel upgrades to DX9 (at least in specs) and programmers can bump the lowest requirements up, SIS releases a piece of junk. Hopefully all the big devs will just ignore that and insist on DX8/9 cards for their games...

It's true that most people buy a system board based mainly of price. It's also true that this has not been the real substance of SIS' image problem. The real reason SIS has an image/rep as a 'cheap' brand name is from their foray in the videocard arena, IMO. Their technology was never geared toward gamers who upgrade/build their systems the most often and thus they were never considered a 'serious' name brand.

Cool more SiS goodness. As TR's resident SiS fanboy, I'm happy to see the competition sticking around ;)