Tuesday, August 29, 2000

Introduction

It's been a while since we've last had the pleasure of reviewing a Soyo motherboard. For that reason, it's with some pleasure that we take on this review of the Athlon slot A, VIA KX133 chipset-equipped, Soyo SY-K7VIA motherboard. True to form, the SY-K7VIA benefits from many of the small niceties that Soyo's design team have been adding to their products for years. For example, there is the "Soyo Combo Setup" BIOS menu, from which it is possible to alter the Front-Side Bus frequency, the processor's Vcore voltage, and several other parameters - many of which were developed by Soyo. As for the software bundle, Soyo has generously included a bonus CD with every SY-K7VIA board, which includes an ensemble of interesting, and useful software utilities. With all that said, and done though, it's high time we got down to business, and kicked-off our analysis.

The features

The Soyo SY-K7VIA is expandable via its 5 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, single AGP port, and AMR slot. There are also 3 168-pin DIMM sockets available, which can be used to install upto 1.5GB of PC100, or PC133 memory. Note that if it hadn't been for the presence of a floppy disk connector in-between 2 PCI slots, it might have been possible to have a 6th PCI slot available.

Configuration of the SY-K7VIA is accomplished from within the BIOS; there are no jumpers related to the CPU on the circuit board. All set-up work is done from within the BIOS menu labeled "Soyo Combo Setup", where it is possible to set the FSB to a frequency ranging from 100MHz to 166MHz, including values of: 100Mhz, 101Mhz, 102Mhz, 103Mhz, 105Mhz, 107Mhz, 109Mhz, 110Mhz, 111Mhz, 113Mhz, 115Mhz, 116Mhz, 117Mhz, 120Mhz, 125Mhz, 130Mhz, 133Mhz, 135Mhz, 137Mhz, 139Mhz, 140Mhz, 143Mhz, 145Mhz, 148Mhz, 150Mhz, 155Mhz, and 166Mhz.

Within the same menu, there also lies an option permitting +.05V, +.1v, +.2v, +.3v or + .4v to be added to the value of the processor's Vcore voltage.

Finally, within the "Chipset Features Setup" menu, there is an option allowing the memory bus to be set to a value 33MHz higher or lower than the operating frequency of the FSB.

Next: Additional features.