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 The
motherboard engineers at
Soyo,
until recently, had been a little quiet in terms of
releasing new, innovative products to the market for the
Pentium 4 platform. It almost seemed as if Soyo was
sitting out on the side lines as the Pentium 4 was
introduced, only driving new designs in the Socket A market.
Not that Soyo actually avoided the new Intel platform all
together. However, boards were not released based on
the i850 chipset or the Socket 423. Now, with the
advent of DDR support for the Pentium 4 and with chipsets
such as VIA's P4X266A, the SiS645 and the recently released
Intel i845D, Soyo has come to life with motherboards
targeted for the enthusiast with a plethora of highly
integrated features.
The following is
a HotHardware review and analysis of the P4S Dragon Ultra, a
SiS645 based board and the P4I Fire Dragon, an Intel i845D
based motherboard, both from the good folks at Soyo
Computer.
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Soyo's
P4S Dragon Ultra and P4I Fire Dragon |
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DDR Based Pentium 4
Offerings with all the bells and whistles |
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Soyo P4S
Dragon Ultra
CPU
Supports Intel Pentium 4 Socket 478 processor 400MHz
System Data Bus
Chipset
SIS 645/961 chipset
Memory
3
DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 DDR
SDRAM support
Audio
C-Media CMI8738 6-channel audio (optional)
S/PDIF-in/out interface (optional)
Multi I/O
2 channels of BUS Master
IDE Port support Ultra DMA 33/66/100
Miscellaneous
AGP 4X slot
4 USB 1.1 ports
6 PCI slots / 1 CNR slot
Integrated Networking
Intel 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN controller (optional)
Ultra DMA 133/RAID
High Point HPT372 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
RAID 0/1/0+1
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Soyo P4I
Fire Dragon
CPU
Supports Intel Pentium 4 socket 478 processors
400MHz System Data
Bus
Chipset
Intel i845D and ICH2 chipset
Memory
2 DIMM slots for up to 2GB of PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM
support
Miscellaneous
AGP 4X slot
4 USB 1.1 ports
6 PCI slots / 1 CNR slot
Provides 2 IEEE1394 ports
Multi I/O
2 channels of BUS Master
IDE Port support Ultra DMA 33/66/100
Audio
C-Media CMI8738 6-channel audio (optional)
S/PDIF-in/out interface (optional)
Integrated
Networking
Intel 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN controller (optional)
Ultra DMA 133/RAID
High Point HPT372 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
RAID 0/1/0+1
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Talk about feature set, these
boards are packed to the gills with all the toys and Soyo
also took things a step further by bundling in really nice
add-ons like the SPDIF Output Header for full 6 Channel
Audio for use with the C-MEDIA on board sound chip, that
comes standard with both of these boards. In addition,
Soyo packs in their "Mighty Bolt" 3.5/5'25 Drive Bay Break
Out Boxes that, for the P4S Dragon Ultra support four USB
ports (2 USB 2.0 Ports with mail in coupon for a USB 2.0
adapter card) and for the P4I Fire Dragon, support two USB
ports, a Smart Card Reader (for user authentication
functionality), and one of the Fire Wire ports.
Also, both boards have an
integrated 10/100 Ethernet Port on the main I/O Block at the
back of the board. We should note that both of these
10/100 ports functioned very well in testing across our
lab's local LAN tapped into a Cable Data line.
Performance of these Ethernet ports easily rivals the best
PCI card performance from the likes of Intel or 3Com.
A Closer Look At The Soyo P4S
Dragon Ultra
SiS645 DDR333 Chipset For The Pentium 4
(click images for full view)
Then there are
the integrated Highpoint Controllers. These are driven
by the second generation Highpoint 372 chips that support
ATA133 and ATA133 RAID 0, 1 and 0+1. You just can't
beat the kind of integration Soyo brings to the table with
both of these boards.
Let's take a
closer look at the P4I Fire Dragon, Soyo's Intel i845D
offering.
Soyo P4I Fire Dragon Closer, BIOS
Settings and Setup
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