SOYO K8USA Dragon Ultra Athlon 64 ALi M1687 Mainboard Review (1)
Bluetooth 2 Dec 2003

Introduction

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We have seen a number of Athlon 64 board reviews on OCW.  ALi M1687 Reference board, Gigabyte K8NNXP (nForce3), Gigabyte K8VNXP (K8T800), BIOSTAR K8VHA Pro (K8T800), BIOSTAR iDEQ 200P, SIS 755 Ref Board, ABIT KV8-MAX 3  and ASUStek's K8V Deluxe. Today we look at the first retail board based on the ALi M1687 chipset - SOYO K8USA Dragon Ultra.

SOYO is not an unknown brand in the industry. From the days of KT333 Dragon Ultra, the Dragon series of boards has made SOYO a well known brand for best packaging and has the necessary overclocking features users are looking for.

SOYO K8USA Dragon Ultra inherits this tradition and we have the first retail K8 board based on this chipset. K8USA Dragon Ultra features support for the AMD Socket-754 Athlon 64 Based on ALi M1687 Chipset supporting 400 MHz FSB, DDR400/333, 6-ch audio, 8X AGP PRO, overclock capability, 10/100/1000 Mbps Giga LAN, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, IEEE 1394. Not only that the package also comes with embedded ALI M5283 RAID chip, provide Two channel serial ATA and One channel parallel ATA with RAID 0,1. What that means is that you can have IDE RAID and SATA RAID + normal IDE making it one of the boards that caters for upgrades in the near future. On top of all these, the board features o/c functions allowing you to adjust fsb, voltage levels (see gallery). Lets take a look at the gallery for more information.

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Specifications

AMD Socket-754 Athlon 64 Based on AMD 8151 Chipset ATX Motherboard Supporting 400 MHz FSB, DDR400/333, 6-ch audio, 8X AGP PRO, overclock capability, 10/100/1000 Mbps Giga LAN, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, IEEE 1394

BLACK LABEL EDITION
The Black Label represents the new breed of quality and bundling value that Soyo is known for. The NEW Black Label Edition includes the NEW BayONE XP 7-in1 Flash Memory Reader/Writer supporting the USB 2.0 Interface with front panel access CMOS reset jumper. It also bundles with S/PDIF Digital Audio Interface card for the true surround sound effect, and 2 ports 1394 IEEE Firewire Bracket. The 8-in1 software bundle includes Norton Anti-Virus. The Black Label edition will give more "BANG out of your BUCK!"

Embedded ALI M5283 RAID chip, provide Two channel serial ATA and One channel parallel ATA with RAID 0,1
On board VIA VT6120 Giga LAN chip, provides 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet function
On board VIA 6306 chip provides 3* IEEE 1394 ports
Anti Burn Regulator to prevent system from overheating CPU core voltage, FSB & multiplier adjustable via BIOS setup via DIP switch
Serial ATA
Adjustable DIMM voltage
Adjustable AGP Voltage
Flexible PCI Divider and APIC/IRQ Sharing Options
Supports High-speed USB 2.0 ports
Supports IEEE 1394
Supports Smart Card Reader Connector
Supports Wake On LAN (WOL) function to simplify network management
Suspend to RAM, Suspend to Disk
Supports S1, S3, and S4
Overclocking Capability: CPU, DIMM, and AGP Voltage adjustable, CPU FSB, and AGP Frequency. Adjustable.
 

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