Soyo SY-P4S Dragon Ultra
Board Revision : ?
BIOS Version : 2AA3 (16. January 2002)
Soyo is currently furnishing all of its motherboards with an incredible amount of features. Recently, the i845 DDR motherboard from Soyo attained top position in a motherboard comparison due to its numerous features. This time, the scenario appears once again, since the Dragon Ultra comes with a similar list of features : 6 PCI slots, 3 DIMM sockets, 4 fan headers, ATA/100 IDE RAID controller from HighPoint, a PCI sound system with C-Media chip and digital I/O, plus an integrated 100 Mbit network adapter.
Noteworthy is the 3.5" module that includes 4 USB ports, thus making them accessible at the front of your computer. The labelling "USB 2.0" is confusing, though, as the controller does not support this new standard. However, the cables and the connector module do.
This board reaches high performance levels, yet it took quite some effort to get there. This is due to the various memory configuration parameters in the BIOS : approximately 12 settings can be altered, and it required about 15 boot ups and almost two hours of testing until we found the ideal settings for stable operation with our memory from Corsair. Less-experienced users will be overwhelmed by this huge number of settings.
Soyo also scores points with the items that it includes in the package : three 80-wire IDE cables, and a lot of software (e.g. Norton Ghose, Anti Virus 2002, Adobe Active Share, Acrobat Reader and WinDVD 2000).
