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Quality and Setup of the Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra Motherboard |
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Looking Good... |
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The
Soyo
KT333 Dragon Ultra Motherboard:
When we
first took the KT333 Dragon Ultra out of the package, its
quality immediately got our attention. This board
looks like a decent amount of thought went into its layout
and appearance. With its black PCB and multi-colored
components, the Dragon Ultra stands out among the rest, as a
board that aims to be different. Let's take a closer
look and see what this encouraging new board has to offer.
The Soyo
KT333 Dragon Ultra comes with a clean layout, offering a lot
of different features in a compact design. The board
comes with 3 DIMMS which can support up to 3 GB of DDR RAM.
There is a hefty amount of capacitors in close proximity to
the Socket and the ATX power connector, a good sign that
this board should have decent stability. Two standard
IDE connectors are located just behind the DIMMS, while two
more are located near the Southbridge for the High-Point
RAID controller. The system comes with a High-Point
HPT372 chip, giving the motherboard full ATA133 capability
on all channels. Two USB 2.0 compatible headers are
mounted on the edge of the board. Unlike most other
boards on the market, Soyo has placed green contoured
sockets over the headers, which help assure that the cabling
is plugged in properly.
The motherboard
comes equipped with 1 AGP and 5 PCI slots. Although we
always like to see the maximum amount of slots possible,
this is a very minor issue, especially if the on-board audio
is utilized. Once the expansion audio
adapter is installed, one slot would have to be sacrificed
anyway, so the lack of a 6th slot seems to be a logical
decision. Adjacent to the AGP slot is an ATX12V
connector for providing addition power to an AGP Pro card.
Overall, the board's layout and features look pretty good.
Nevertheless, we soon found a number of items that did
trouble us.
For starters, we
found that the capacitors located next to the CPU socket
were a bit close for comfort. Using a GlobalWin FOP38
HSF, we felt a little cramped when trying to mount the
retention clip. If a larger HSF is planned, we suspect
that the capacitors could pose a problem. It was also
disappointing to see that there was no retention device on
the AGP slot, a must in this Tech Writer's opinion.
Lastly, we were very surprised to find the complete lack of
any thermal tape, grease or pad between the Northbridge and
active cooling package. This should have very little
affect on the performance of the board under normal
conditions. However, if the effort is going to be made
to offer a cooling solution for the Northbridge, that could
help when overclocking, then it should be done right.
This is one of those small details that can really take away from
an otherwise impressive product.
The back panel
connectors are evenly laid out and look very similar to a
majority of motherboard on the market, the integrated RJ-45
LAN connector being the only variation. Aside from the
RJ-45, 2 PS2, 2 USB 2.0, 2 Serial and 1 LPT connectors are
mounted of the back of the board. A joystick connector
and on-board audio connectors are also provided for using
the on-board audio processors basic features.
The Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG:
When it comes to
the BIOS of the Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra, this board comes
well-equipped. Soyo has customized the Phoenix Award
BIOS, implementing their popular "Soyo COMBO Feature."
This screen has incorporated all of the critical settings
most commonly adjusted into one screen. Essentially,
when the system is first booted, the Optimized Defaults
could be loaded and then the rest of the board could be
tweaked from within the COMBO screen.
The system bus
speed can be adjusted in 1MHz. increments ranging from
133MHz. to 255MHz. The CPU multiplier can be set from
6x - 14x, while the DRAM clock can be set for 133MHz.
(266MHz. DDR), 166MHz. (333MHz. DDR), or By SPD. The
CPU Core Voltage adjustments range from 1.100V - 1.850V and
the DDR(2.5) Voltage can be set for 2.6, 2.7, or 2.8V.
The AGP(1.5) Voltage can also be adjusted from either 1.6,
1.7, or 1.8V. When we accessed the Advance Tune-Up
Settings to configure the finer settings of the memory, we
did notice one difference with the Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra
that we had not noticed with other KT333 motherboards.
The Active to Precharge (Tras) setting can be adjusted to
either 6T or 7T, while virtually any other board we've seen
in the past has a 5T/6T setting. We'll cover the
performance of the system a little later on and see if the
memory scores are impeded by the more conservative choices.
The PC Monitor
screen is where all of the critical system voltages and
temperatures can be monitored to insure that everything is
running properly. There is a setting available to
shutdown the system if the CPU fan malfunctions, but there
is no high temperature setting available. The high
temperature setting is something we like to see in an
overclockable motherboard, helping to prevent the novice
from doing any damage to their system. The fan setting
is useful, however, some users may find it to be a nuisance
if they have a cooler that recommends connecting it to the
power supply rather than a fan-header on the board.
In general, we
found the BIOS of the Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra to be quite
robust with its features. Needless to say, we are
eager to get cranking and see what this motherboard could do
on the track. So let's get started!
Sandra 2002 Pro
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