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The
Soyo Computer SY-6BE+
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Stability
for the conservative @ heart!
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| Soyo
Copmputer is one of the larger Motherboard Manufacturers in the
business. Established in the Mid 1980s, they have grown to be a
force in the industry and have garnered many awards for their
products from major publications. The SY-6BE+ is Soyo's answer to
the BX6 from Abit. The SY-6BE+ is indeed a firm reply. This board
came to us courtesy of Triptonics.
Thanks guys! Anyway, here are the specs... |
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100MHz
FSB Pentium II Processor Based ATX Mainboard with AGP Port
Supports
the following processors
100MHz FSB Pentium III 450/500* MHz
100MHz FSB Pentium II 350/400/450* MHz
66MHz FSB Pentium II 233/266/300/333 MHz
66MHz FSB Celeron 300A~433* MHz
66MHz FSB Celeron 266/300 MHz
*This mainboard is designed to be able to support up to Pentium III
500MHz and Celeron 433 MHz processors. However, the Pentium III
500MHz and Celeron 433 MHz processors are not available yet at this
moment for testing.
CHIPSET
Intel 82440BX two chip AGPset
System
Memory
Three 168-pin SDRAM DIMM sockets support up to 768MB
Provides ECC (Error Checking Correction) capability
Expansion
Slots
Four 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (v2.1 compliant)
Three 16-bit ISA slots (One PCI/ISA Shared slot)
One AGP Slot (v1.0 compliant)
On Board Ultra I/O Chip
ITE 8671/D chip
Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible)
One Parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
One FDD port (Supports LS120, 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88MB FDD)
Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
Two Ultra DMA-33 IDE ports
Supports two independent channels for four IDE devices
Supports up to PIO mode 4 and Ultra DMA/33
Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
Board
Dimensions
Four layers, 30.5 cm x 18 cm (12" x 7.1")
ATX form factor
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
Award PCI BIOS with green, ACPI, APM, plug and play, DMI functions
Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE / SCSI /CD-ROM / FDD / LS120 /
ZIP, and Y2K compliant
2 Mbit Flash ROM
Double Stack Back-Panel I/O Connectors
PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports
Two USB ports
Two D-Sub 9-pin male Serial ports
One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port
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| Did
I really need to put all those words up there when you could have
just studied the picture? Well, some people are sticklers for the
details and this board delivers just that. Attention to the details
is what sets this board apart from the others. |
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board has a plethora (can I say that?) of features that are not
found in most boards today. For instance, you have an on board
thermistor for CPU temp. monitoring. This is a really effective
little "gizmo" and I am "King of The Gizmo" so I
really get into this kind of stuff. When running the board at 515
Mhz. Did I mention it overclocks fairly well? More on that later.
The CPU Temp. was steady at 31C for about a 1/2 hour of the Quake 2
demo sequence. It was reassuring to know that my CPU wasn't baking
too much in there! I know... Just a "gizmo" but I call it
cheap insurance. Here is a comprehensive list of the unique features
of this board. |
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- Supports
66/75/83/100/103/112/124/133MHz system clock speeds
- Innovative
Sofset for CPU installation
- Supports on
board Hardware monitoring and Includes Hardware DoctorTM utility
to streamline PC management
- Supports
Creative SB-LINK PC-PCI for PCI audio
- Supports WOL
(Wake on LAN) function to simplify network management
- PC 98 ACPI
compliant
- DMI (Desktop
Management Interface) Utility
- Advanced
Management Capabilities : Software power off control, Power-on
by keyboard, Power-on by Alarm, Modem Ring On, Flexible
thermistor for CPU temperature monitoring etc.
- IRQ
Assignment Capability for the AGP and each PCI Slot
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| Ahhhh!
Finally, a motherboard with the ability to assign each PCI Slot a
specific IRQ! This will take the headache out of those stubborn
"plug and pray" cards that like to conflict with about
anything else in the system. Another sweet feature is the
"Keyboard Power On" and 124 Mhz. Front Side Bus Setting.
All of these feature including the CPU set up are configured in the
BIOS. Soyo's "Combo Setup" works alot like Abit's
"Soft Menu". Like I said, more features than you can shake
a stick at! |
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| On
the down side, unfortunately this board does not support CPU Voltage
Adjustments. So, if you have a CPU that likes a little extra voltage
to overclock with stability, you may be out luck. That being said,
the BX6 Rev. 1 that we use here as our test bench couldn't run our
P2-333 SL2TV at 500+ Mhz. without setting the voltage to 2.1V. The
Soyo however, had the P2-333 running at 515 Mhz. solid as a rock at
the default voltage! You
may get different results depending on your CPU but this was an
impressive feat in itself! A down side is the positoning of the ATX
Power Connector and the 3 Pin Smart Fan Connectors on the board. The
ATX Power Connector is right behind the CPU Slot! The same goes for
the 3 Pin Fan Power Connectors. One sits right under where a larger
heatsink would encroach when installed on the CPU. We actually
couldn't use that connector at all because it was blocked by the CPU
heatsink. |
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| Now,
on to the performance... We configured both systems with identical
components. We just swapped our good ol' trusty BX6 out for the
SY-6BE+ |
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System
Specs are as follows...
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Full
Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Abit BX6 Motherboard and Soyo SY-6BE+
Motherboard 160 MB of PC100 CAS2 RAM, IBM Deskstar 10GXP 10GB 7200
RPM EIDE UDMA Hard Drive, STB Velocity 4400 TNT AGP Video Card,
Metabyte Wicked 3D 12MB Voodoo 2 PCI Card, Monster Sound MX300 PCI
Audio Card, Toshiba 3rd. Gen. 4.8X DVD/32XCD
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