Thursday, April 29, 1999

Introduction

The Soyo SY-5EMA+ is based upon Soyo's own licensed version of the Via MVP3 Chispet version CE named ETEQ 82C6638/6629 AGP Chipset. The evaluation unit I have in hand came with 1024K of L2 cache factory installed memory. The main difference between the 5EMA and the 5EMA+ seems to be that the later motherboard doesn't have SIMMs memory socket anymore as there are only three 168 pins DIMMs memory sockets. The configuration of this motherboard is 100% accomplished via jumpers and Dip switches but its versatility and therefore its Overclockability is very great. Let's look in details what has to offer and how's performing this motherboard in the following analyse.

The Features

The first thing catching my attention on this motherboard was the number of jumpers. While jumperless motherboards are becoming the standard, I have been very surprised to find so many of them on the SY-EMA+. There are jumpers to set the processor core voltage, the main memory frequency and Dip switches to set the clock frequency and clock multipliers.

The SY-5EMA+ clock frequency can be selected from a choice of frequencies ranging from 66Mhz to 124Mhz including: 66Mhz, 75Mhz, 83Mhz 95Mhz, 100Mhz, 112Mhz, and 124Mhz. The clock multipliers can be selected from a choice ranging from 1.5X to 5X in steps of .5X. The processor voltage core can be adjusted from 2.1 to 3.52 vdc.

The expansion slots included are 2 ISA slots, 5 PCI slots and 3 DIMMs memory banks and of course 1 AGP port. The L2 cache memory size is 1024Kb.

Below, we have a picture of the Soyo SY-5EMA+ Super7 motherboard:

Installation

Installing this motherboard was not a big challenge because as a fact I didn't even had to re-install Win98 has the preceding motherboard tested was also using a Via MVP3 chipset. Therefore, all I did was to change the board, replug all the hardware and boot the computer, that's it, that's all, everything was working perfectly fine...

Features

Features such as: Wake up on LAN, PS2 mouse and keyboard connectors, Wake up on modem ring, PC 97 ACPI compliant, and system health monitoring are also supported.

The Software Bundle

The software bundle included with the Soyo SY-5EMA+ includes: a CD version of the users manual, ETEQ IDE Bus Master, ETEQ AGP Host driver, ETEQ IRQ remapping utility, ETEQ ACPI drivers and a system health monitor utility.

Continue on next page with The performance tests results

MODEL SY-5EMA+ DESCRIPTION 100MHz Host Bus Pentium Processor Based ATX Mainboard with AGP Port PROCESSOR 321-pin ZIF Socket 7 - Intel Pentium Processor with MMX Technology up to 233MHz - Supports AMD-K6 (166~300 MHz) and AMD-K6-2 (266~450 MHz) and AMD-K6-3* 400 MHz - Supports Cyrix /IBM 6x86MX (PR200 ~ 266), 6x86MII (300 ~ 380) - Supports IDT WinChip2(200~233) and WinChip (266~300) - Supports Rise (PR233 ~ 266) CHIPSET ETEQ 82C6638/6629 AGP Chipset L2 Cache 1MB Pipelined Burst SRAM on board System Memory Three 168-pin DIMM sockets (8/16/32/64/128/256MB Module) Supports up to 768MB EDO and SDRAM Expansion Slots 1 x 124 bit AGP slot 5 x 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots 2 x 16-bit ISA slots (One shareable PCI/ISA slot) On Board Ultra I/O Chip SMC 37C669 Super I/O chip 2 x RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible) 1 x Parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode) Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver Two Ultra DMA-33 IDE ports Supports two independent channels for four IDE devices Supports up to PIO mode 4 and Ultra DAM/33 2 x PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports Boot-Block Flash BIOS Award PCI BIOS with green, plug and play, DMI functions Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE / SCSI /CD-ROM / FDD / LS120 / ZIP, and Year 2000 compliant 1 Mbit Flash ROM Board Dimensions Four layers, 30.5 cm x 19 cm (12" x 7.5") ATX form factor Double Stack Back-Panel I/O Connectors PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports 2 x USB ports 2 x D-Sub 9-pin male Serial ports 1 x D-Sub 25-pin female printer port FCC Class B and CE EMI Regulation Compliant