The Soyo SY-K7V.

Board revision: 1.0

BIOS version: K7VXA-2AA1

The packaging for the Soyo motherboard.

All the accessories included with the Soyo.

No other motherboard manufacturer can top this one - the Soyo comes with a 3.5" card reader, smart cards and integrated USB ports as front outlets. And there are also three IDE cables thrown in, with a 5.25" mounting bay for the card reader to boot. A rather odd bird is the integrated sound feature that can be accessed using the slot bracket included with the mobo. Thanks to this baby, both analog and optical (digital) input and output devices (SP/DIF format) can communicate with the board. A few of the highlights on the board are the AGP Pro slot, the integrated Promise RAID controller and the network chip. The board's colorful port and slot design is especially pleasing - although the choice of colors is a matter of personal preference. BIOS includes a user-friendly tuning menu that allows you to overclock both the RAM and the CPU.

View of the integrated soundchip.

The Promise RAID controller.

A separate feature allows this board to be automatically run in its fastest mode without much extra effort, which helped propel Soyo to the top of all the benchmarks. Judging this board by all its characteristics, it definitely deserves the winner's laurels.

View of the ports on the Soyo board.