Monday, May 07, 2001

Introduction

Lately, our testing procedures seem to have become a bit routine around the office, as it seems that every board that makes it to the door is based on the VIA KT133A chipset. In fact, that's been so often the case that we were a bit giddy when we received the Soyo Sy-K7ADA - which uses the ALi Magik.

The SY-K7ADA is a pure DDR board that has been built with support both for a DDR FSB of 133MHz, and for DDR-SDRAM of the PC1600 (100MHz) and PC2100 (133MHz) varieties.

Let's say we take a closer look.

The features

Configuration of the CPU is a bit different here that with most KT133A boards. Essentially, that means that there are quite a few jumpers and Dip switches to be found along the board's circuitry.

In particular, we found a Dip array labeled RJ1 which can be used to set the CPU's clock multiplier. RJ1 is backed-up by RJ2 & RJ3, which are used to set the system for an automatic multiplier configuration, or configuration according to RJ1's settings.

Next we have Dips VJ1, which can be used to adjust the processor's Vcore voltage.

Finally, Dip array FJ1 can be used to set the operating frequency of both the FSB and memory bus.

As for the BIOS, we found only a single function related to the configuration of the processor, and that was for changing the FSB frequency.

In short, the SY-K7ADA's BIOS lacks functions for adjusting the Vcore, the Vio voltage, and/or the clock multiplier.

As for the rest, it can be accessed through the "Advanced Chipset Features" menu, from where user's can change the CAS latency of their memory, and access the full gambit of feature & functions normally found in this menu. Note that to change the memory's CAS latency, user's must first select "Normal" under the "System Performance" option within the "Soyo Combo Features" menu.

Next: Technical details.