Why the hell shouldn't I buy the Dragon plus???

[SirRiff]

Greetings

Same damn features as the Asus +onboard lan
Stable in all the benchmarks
Cheaper
Overcocks well

Is this not the absolute best mobo for Athlon XP?
What am i missing here?

SirRiff

 

[Guest]

Well, not only do I agree 100% but judging from the time here at 5:12a.m. I'm not doing too bad. I HAD the MSI K7T266 Pro 2 and found it very quirky, especially any bios tweaks and just plain unstable in every sense without crashes. It would render textures lower than my video card said it should...just a bunch of crap. I went to MSI, read the forum there, called MSI, got some voice mail of a lady who announced she was no longer with the company followed by a disconnect 3X in a row. MY POINT...fed up, I asked around, here also, was partial to the ASUS based on brand recognition and the love of my ole' A7M266 which by the way was better in every single facet of a mobo compared to the MSI.

NOW, I have a point to make, I today bought the Soyo board at www.tcwo.com and then over to www.intolan.com for a Lian Li sweeet aluminum cabinet and 320 watts of juice. Hooked everything up and FIRST SHOT it fired right up, took XP, took every driver, and I sit here saying WHY the hell did I even consider anything else. Not only does it come with the advertised extra IDE's, cables, straps, but a cd full of free stuff, Adobe, DVD software, Norton AntiVirus, and a bunch more, a smart card reader which I cannot wait to download some mods for the digital cable box reader )......and USB's all over, literally more fan 3 pins than I could ever use.....even a second CPU fan..

Tom's Hardware ROCKS, they could only mention ONE THING for XP users....flash the bios before installing the new os..I was told to do so by the guys at tcwo and sure enough after I did not a peep or negative beep.

Now someone like me cannot be alone in this.....I had so much faith in this board based on the thorough review and investigation of SOYO vs. ASUS and went with a SOYO that KNOWING my wife going for her masters degree in nursing has to do a paper this weekend I dove into the FDISK, cleared the drive and pushed forward. You all know the moment of anticipation after post and you set bios then install the os....all the while contemplating your purchase, contemplating all the work that goes into this obsession and to have it come out 99.9%, cool, huh. I missed one thing, transposed the one wire for HDD and the light wasn't on ......whew....so much for troubles.


BUY THE SOYO, thank you Tom's Hardware Guide, you are the best at testing!

Bob

 

[Guest]

Hey thanks guys for the posts on Soyo Mbo. I am about to jump in with both feet ( been using and upgrading PCs since mid 80s) This will be the first time I have started at the MBO level and hearing your experiences with the SOYO SY-K7V (Dragon Plus)is encouraging!

Does anyone know if the current version of the Dragon Plus have the over heating protection scheme, as devolop by AMD, implemented? If not should I wait until it is implemented (how long of a wait would that be?)

This next question reveals my inexperience with higher end systems. What is the "promise on board RAID controller?"

What is the difference between the Dragon and the Dragon Plus?

Keep those electrons flowing

Oh yeah I can empathize with your wife re: the Nursing papers being due. I graduated from the UWSoN in 1995 I am really happy being a nurse.

Thanks again
David

 

[bront]

First of all, THG said that none of the MBs they reviewed had the thermal protection features.

The Promise RAID controler will let you run several IDE hard drives in a RAID aray. This speeds up the drives by spreading the data out on them allowing for merged capacity and increased performance (you can write to multiple drives simultaniously, reducing latency). You can read about RAID in this <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/01q4/011023/index.html" target="_new">Tom's Hardware article</A>

Personaly, RAID is an expensive way to increase computer performance, and if you run in RAID 1, not RAID 0 or 0+1, you run the risk of losing your data if ANY drive goes bad/has a problem. The increased risk of simply RAID 0, and the increased cost (2 drives over 1 for RAID 0 or 1 Min, 4 drives min for RAID 0+1) doesn't quite seem worth it. However, it doesn't hurt to have the controler, as you can still use it as an IDE controler.

The difference between the Dragon and the Dragon Plus is several of the options. Specificly, the Smart Card Reader.

By the way, what is the card reader for? I'm not familiar with Smart Cards.

Personaly, I'm debating between the Dragon, Dragon Plus, Asus A7N266-E, or the ASUS A7M266-D for my next computer.

My next comptuer is going to basicly be a server, used to store files, route the internet, be a firewall, and perhaps route e-mail access so I can fool around with MS Exchange. So, I don't need high end video or sound (why the Nforce boards look good), and I may not need that increadable performance. It might be fun to go with a dual Athlon system though, which is why I'm looking at the ASUS A7M266-D.

Would I be better off with a Dragon and a cheep vid-card or the Nforce board for my needs?

Chesnuts roasting on an open CPU
Bill Gates nipping at your wallet

 

[Guest]

the difference between the dragon and the dragon plus is also the chipset.kt266 and kt266a.the first was not so good
the second is much better.i have the dragon plus
IT ROCKS!!!!!!!

 

[Guest]

Well I have had nothing but trouble with my Soyo dragon plus motherboard. I have replaced the board 3 times and all three had the same problem. I can't get any networking to work on it. Both the onboard and a PCI nic card would not work. I have flashed the bios and loaded the latest and greatest drivers but still nothing. It sends and sends and sends but will not recieve anything. I know all the connecting hardware (lan cable hub and cable modem) all work cause I can connect it to my other computer and get right out. They both have the exact same settings and use DHCP for my connection. I have tried using win98, win2000 pro, and winxp pro and they all had the same problem. I know its enabled in the bios cause I checked. I tried to release and renew via the ipconfig but that didn't help either It just does not work and I do not know why. Soyo won't tell me anything either. Almost like its a problem they would rather ignore and forget. Needless to say I am very disapointed in this board and surprised cause all I heard were good things about it before I bought it.

 

[Rob423]

everybody get's a Bad Lemon once in there life... Soyo Works Fine for me.... you probley were 1 in a million that had a problem with yours...you were just the unlucky person that recieved it..

Later, rob

Once you go AMD, You never Go back!!

 

[Crashman]

I won't stop you from throuwing your money at a company that has made me so much money in service calls (VIA).

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Guest]

Actually I would like to take back my last comment. It seemed my problem was not my MB all along. It was my cable provider. They used MAC addressing and they had to reset it so I could get on. Since then I have had no troubles with this board of course I have only used it for about a week tops and only a few hours of that is actual normal use and the rest troubleshooting this lan problem. The thing I like is I actually got my PCI video to work without a hitch. I couldn't do this on my other computers. If you want more opinions you can go to viaarena.com or amdmb.com to read up on the soyo dragon + there

 

[Guest]

I've built 18 P4S boards (P4s) and 12 Athlons, and the Dragon Plus boards have only had two problems - that MAC Addressing issue.

Now, I do two things: write the DIM Serial Number on the back of the motherboard, and I flash the BIOS first off - nothing occurs before I update the BIOS.

I have RAIDed five installations with 2 or 4 HDs, but all others are single HD ATA133 Maxtors. For those customers who want fast disk access for their databases, this is a great $50 addition to their parts cost. Well worth it. I don't see going back to mere $100 boards when $150 gets so much more.

For those customers buying these at Fry's, I HIGHLY recommend you open the package ON THE PREMISES so you can be assured to getting the ton of cables and all extra parts that Soyo shipped. hint hint

 

[jlanka]

They used MAC addressing and they had to reset it so I could get on.

Whew! I was dumbfounded because I also have the SDP and have had no problems whatsoever. Thats a classic though. Caching the MAC address. BTW - when you were debugging this did you ever try to talk between 2 PC's on your LAN (static IP addresses would have worked fine)? That might have led you to a solution faster. Just a thought for next time.

Get yourself a cable/DSL router, and eliminate all those problems once and for all.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>