Soyo's SY6BA+IV

 The Soyo's SY-6BA+IV

 The immortal motherboard!

 SY-6BA+IV Specifications

66/100MHz FSB Slot 1 Based
Intel 440BX ATX Motherboard

Processor
Supports the following processors
100MHz FSB Pentium III Processors 450/500/550/600 MHz
100MHz FSB Pentium II 350/400/450 MHz
66MHz FSB Pentium II 233/266/300/333 MHz
66MHz FSB Celeron Processors 266~300MHz
66MHz FSB Celeron Processors 300A~433 MHz with integrated 128KB full speed L2 cache

Available FSB options

66/ 75/ 81/ 83/ 90/ 95/ 100/ 105/ 110/ 112/ 113/ 115/ 117/ 118/ 120/ 122/ 124/ 126/ 133/

135/ 137/ 138/ 140/ 142/ 144/ 150/ 155MHz

Chipset
Intel 440BX Chipset
66/100MHz CPU FSB

System Memory
Four 168-pin SDRAM DIMM sockets support up to 1GB
PC100 DIMM support
Provides ECC (Error Checking Correction) capability
Expansion Slots
Five 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (V2.1 compliant)
Two 16-bit ISA slots (one shared ISA/PCI slot)
One AGP slot (v1.0 compliant)

On Board Ultra I/O Chip
- ITE 8671F-A chip
Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible)
One parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
One FDD port (Supports LS120, 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD
Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver

Ultra DMA 33 & 66 IDE ports
Four independent channels for up to Eight IDE devices
Two channels support up to PIO mode 4 & UDMA 33
Two channels support up to ATA-66
Four PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports

Boot-Block Flash BIOS
Award PCI BIOS with green, ACPI, APM, PnP, DMI, functions and Year 2000 compliant
Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE/SCSI/CD-ROM/FDD LS120/ZIP
2 Mbit Flash ROM

Adjustable CPU Voltage

Board Dimensions
Four layers, 30.5 cm x 19 cm (12¡¨ x 7.5¡¨)
ATX form factor

Enhanced PC Health Monitoring
On-board voltage monitors for CPU Vcore, VTT, +5v, +12V, 3.3V, 5VSB and battery low
CPU fan four speed control and monitor
FAN speed monitor
Precision CPU temperature monitoring through CPU on-die thermal diode

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
FCC Class B and CE EMI Regulation Compliant
PC98 ACPI Compliant

Setup, Overclocking and Stability

No surprises in this department. The Soyo clocked in our P3-450 @ the usual 558MHz. with a 124MHz. FSB. We also had the option of a 126MHz. FSB X 4.5 for 567MHz. and the P3-450 was stable. However, as we saw in the SY-6BA+III review, the PCI bus is then clocked at 31MHz. on this board vrs. the 124MHz. FSB setting of 41MHz., so there was nothing to gain in performance with this extra setting. However, that is one more frequency at your disposal than the Abit BE6. Come on Soyo! Give us the 126/41 setting or better yet, even more FSB settings! :-)

Another item of note was the SY-6BA+IV's stability. This board is rock solid in every respect. We have seen a definate pattern here at Hot Hardware, with the quality of Soyo products. They make great stuff.

Let's break out the benchmarks but first take a look at the system specs.