Soyo 865PE Dragon 2 Plus

Enter the Dragon...P4 Style

While Soyo typically isn't the first name to jump out at people looking for motherboards, my experience with them has been good in regards to stability. While they have been around for years, they've not been in the limelight since the early Pentium III days and have had a hard time getting back up. Recently, PCChips has bought out Soyo, and it remains to be seen exactly what becomes of the company. However, it is highly likely it will become another company under PCChips like ECS.

Recently, Soyo and Newegg had a steal of a deal with a $75.00 rebate on the Soyo SY-865PE Dragon 2 Plus v1.0 motherboard. I don't know about you, but free is something that gets my attention. Anyway, looking at prices, its still one of the cheapest Socket 478 boards available on-line. This is Soyo's second attempt at a budget i865PE motherboard. By the looks of their original model, the v1.0 makes some massive changes for the better.

The 865PE Dragon 2 Plus (from now on 865PE D2+, or just D2+) is a pretty basic i865PE motherboard, much like the Abit IS7-E. Socket 478 is dead more or less, but that doesn't mean the socket 478 motherboards are going to instantly vanish. While the i915/i925X chipsets are Intel's brand new babies, they aren't quite mainstream yet. Additionally, the lack of the latest and greatest for PCI Express video cards and the lack of any real performance gains over the i865/i875, the new ones haven't quite taken off yet. 'Tis the price of having the latest and greatest sometimes. For the average person, Socket 478 is still a viable option.

Before diving into the review, let's take a quick look at what the D2+ has onboard.

• i865PE + ICH5
  
• 4x 184-pin DIMM slots, 4GB of PC3200 max
  
• 1x AGP 8x/4x slot
  
• 5x PCI slots
  
• 2x IDE
  
• 2x SATA
  
• 1x Floppy
  
• Realtek RTL8100C 10/100Mbps
  
• CMI 9761A audio codec
  
• PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports
  
• 1x RJ45
  
• 4x USB 2.0 ports
  
• 1x Parallel port
  
• 1x Serial port
  
• ATX form factor
  

Accessories included:

• 1x Quick start manual
  
• 1x IDE ribbon cable
  
• 1x Floppy ribbon cable
  
• 1x SATA cable
  
• 1x custom IO shield
  
• 1x Driver CD
  
• 1x App CD
  

Soyo leaves only the bare essentials with the motherboard. While most of that is fine, the included manual is almost worthless. While there is some setup instructions, they are vauge and the BIOS setup gets a single page. I know they're trying to save money, but this is going a little far in my opinion.