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Most of you out
there in cyberspace probably have one or to old AT cases containing
what used to be the top of the line computer system. Also to most of
you, upgrading to a PII, P!!! or Celeron would mean replacing the
case, keyboard, and mouse. If you're like me your old case probably
has some sentimental value or just keeps getting left behind after
the garage sale. Now you have an alternative to put new life into
it. Take out that old mobo , and nail it on the wall, it will
probaly be happier as a wall clock these days.
Now lets get down to business. The Soyo 7IZb+ supports the Socket
370 which currently supports the Celeron PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid
Array) in speeds of 300-533 MHz. This board has a very nice
selection of bus speeds.
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Front Side Bus Options
(FSB/PCI)
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66/33
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75/33
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83/41
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84/41
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100/33
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103/34
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105/35
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110/36
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112/37
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115/38
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120/40
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124/31
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124/41
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133/33
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133/44
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140/35
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150/35
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to the small size, as in the case with most AT boards, installation
is a breeze. Having 3 ISA expansion slots is a plus for anyone
wanting to keep the existing ISA peripherals instead of tacking them
to the wall with the your old motherboard. I'm sure you have at
least 3 ISA peripherals that can you can use from upgrading your
older AT system. |
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Features:
Socket
370
Intel PPGA Celeron 300 ~ 500MHz
Auto-detect CPU voltage
Chip set: Intel 440ZX
PC98, ACPI, Ultra DMA/33
FSB & Multiplier:
Supports up to 256 MB of main memory
Max Memory module size supported 128MB
Cache: 128K CPU built-in cache
Power-on by modem or alarm
Wake-0n-Lan support (WOL) & SB-LINK
Includes Hardware Monitoring and Hardware Doctor
Utility
Memory:
DIMM
X 3, Up to 768MB memory
Expansion
Bus:
1 AGP, AGP 1.0 compliance
4 PCI, 32-Bit master
3 ISA, 16-Bit
IO:
Winbond 83977TF/EF
2 Serial ports, 16550 Fast UART compatible
1 Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP mode
2 USB ports, Rev. 1.0
1 PS/2 Keyboard
1 PS/2 Mouse
FDD, 1.2MB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
IrDA connector
IDE:
UltraDMA-33
PIO mode 4
Bootable from LS120, ZIP drive
Power management:
APM 1.2
ACPI 1.0
BIOS:
Award
PnP BIOS
DMI 2.0
2MB flash memory
Hardware Monitoring:
CPU Temp. monitoring, overheat warning
Other connectors:
Suspend switch and LED
Wake-On-Lan connector
EISCA Fan connector
SB-Link
Form Factor: ATX, 30.5cm X 17cm
Other
Features:
CPU Voltage Auto Detecting (CPU PnP)
Wake-On-Ring
Wake-On-Alarm
Accessories:
1 CD-ROM disc
Intel driver patch for Windows95
Intel AGP Vgart driver
Intel Bus Master driver for Windows95
Shuttle System Manager
Multi-language manuals
1 Easy Manual
1 IDE cable, 1 FDD cable
Power-on by Keyboard
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Soyo
did a nice job in designing the BIOS for this motherboard. The CPU
is set via a soft menu and the cpu voltage is auto detected. The
only jumper needing to be set, is the CPU FSB/AGP BUS selection for
66/100 which is designed for overclocking. The cpu bus speed
settings also indicates the exact PCI bus speed instead of (1/2, 1/
3, 1/ 4).For example: 115/38 (meaning 115 MHz FSB and 38 MHz PCI
bus).
When it comes to stability, I'd have to say that this board has
plenty of it. I was able to run my 300A CPU at 495MHz without any
voltage tweaks. That CPU usually requires a little extra juice. I
bumped up the speed to 540 MHz and almost got into Windows 98 before
my Seagate HD decided to make scrambled eggs out of my data on the
spinnning platters. That HD didn't like the higher system bus
speeds. One interesting feature I noticed in the BIOS, was the IRQ
assignment setting for the PCI slots. You can manually set which PCI
slot gets which IRQ. This is a nery nice feature for fixing IRQ
conflict problems. |
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Test
System
Mid Tower ATX
Case w/ 250W PS, Intel Celeron PPGA 300a overclocked to 495 MHz,
Soyo SY-7IZB+, 64 MB of PC100 RAM, Seagate 4.3 Gig EIDE UDMA Hard
Drive, 3dFX Voodoo3 3000 AGP Card w/ 16MB, Sonic S70 Sound Card, 36X
CDROM, Kingston 10 Base-T NIC, Windows 98 w/ DX6.1
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Overclocking
Overclocking
this motherboard was pretty easy. All the tweaks are done via the
BIOS which is carried over from their Slot 1 BX boards. For not
having a voltage setting, this motherboard does a decent job in the
stability dept.
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Benchmarks
WinTune
98
Offline
Test Results
| CPU |
(1)
Intel Celeron 300A@ 450 MHz |
| Video
Board |
3DFX
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP |
| Video
Mode |
1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM |
64
MB |
| OS |
Windows
98 4.10.1998 |
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Area
Tested
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Value
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| CPU
Integer |
1447.835
MIPS |
| CPU
Floating Point |
577.6065
MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) |
131.7981
MPixels/s |
| Direct3D |
183.2872
MPixels/s |
| OpenGL |
12.8551
MPixels/s |
| Memory |
873.7405
MB/s |
| Cached
Disk |
100.9314
MB/s |
| Uncached
Disk |
2.709748
MB/s |
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| This
is a respectable showing for the Celeron 300a on this board.
Also of note are
the solid disk numbers! On to some ZD Winbench 99 Scores... |
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3D
Mark 99 Max
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| 3DMark |
4241 |
| CPU
3DMark |
4853 |
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Final
Reality
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| 2D
Image Processing |
5.28 |
| 3D
Performance |
4.58 |
| Bus
Transfer Rate |
7.02 |
| Overall
Reality Marks |
5.16 |
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| Those
are some pretty high scores for this setup. Upgrading your old 486
sytem to this would be a nice investment. All of these benchmarks
were done on a system with no tweaks and using the default video
drivers. |
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Overall
Impression
This board is a
good option for upgading your existing AT system. For overclocking,
this board should handle just about anything you can throw at it.
However, your peripherals will be limited to the PCI speeds. It's a
good thing the BIOS tells you the exact bus speed. Plus the
motherboard itself comes with $150 free software. The software alone
pays for the motherboard. The software bundle includes the full
versions of: Norton Ghost, Norton Antivirus, and Norton Virtual
Drive.
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This Soyo
Motherboard gets a Temp-O-Meter Rating of....
90
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| -Tim |
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