Re: Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus

Benchmarking, Continued

Science Mark 2.0

Well, there's not much to say about either one. Both sets are times in seconds. The BLAS tests are Single (1x) and Double (2x) precision benchmarks. The extra work takes longer for the system to complete.

Overclocking

With the lack of voltage adjustments, you basically hope for the best with the stock voltages or try modding the CPU packaging to add some extra voltage. Either way, without PCI/AGP locks, the KT600 plays a part in how far you'll be able to go. I tried a 166MHz FSB first, and while that booted into Windows, it failed Prime 95 after about 30 minutes. 160MHz passed with flying colors, but upon a reboot, the hal.dll file was corrupt, prompting a reinstall of Windows. It appears that the IDE controller is not fond of PCI bus speeds around 40MHz. I feel that the addition of some voltage adjustments would've allowed me to hit a stable 166MHz (or better), and been able to keep the PCI bus happy.

Final Words

Let's start with the good points. It's obvious the SY-KT600 Dragon Plus is a stylish board. A black PCB and purple PCI and DIMM slots will look good in a case window. Soyo has made good use out of the VT8237 southbridge with the SATA ports and using the available NIC (with VIA's PHY chip). Except for one corner, the CPU socket has good clearance and mounting holes to boot. The BIOS has an awesome selection of memory tweaks to round every thing out. Lastly, and very importantly, the board is stable. I did not have any trouble setting it up and getting it going.

Now, the not-so-good points: With a traditional 5 PCI/1 AGP slot design, there is no reason why there should be a layout where the DIMM clips run into the AGP card when opened. In a 6 PCI/1 AGP design or those boards with 5 PCI slots, but have one missing right under the AGP slot (like Abit's IS7-E), this is unavoidable with the traditional layouts. The ATX power connector is behind the I/O panel, which means running the ATX power cable over the CPU or getting really creative with the routing. The IDE and floppy connectors are toward the bottom of the board and will be a problem for those with full tower cases. While I'm not opposed to jumpers and dipswitches, the multiplier dipswitches are in a really bad spot beside the front panel connectors. In the BIOS, Soyo pretty much kills any decent overclocking with a complete absence of voltage adjustments for the CPU, memory, and AGP slot. This is disregarding that the board is based on the KT600 chipset which still operates on dividers instead of AGP/PCI locks.

The SY-KT600 Dragon Plus V 1.0 has alot going for it, but it has about the same amount of things going against it. If you want a board for overclocking, you're best not looking at any KT600 board for starters. However, this board is fine if you want something that you can drop in and go. In the end, if you want a reason why you should pick this board over all other similarly equipped KT600 boards, it's main selling point is price. This board can be found between $50-60 on-line, which is a pretty attractive price even for a KT600 motherboard. It works, and it works well and has a great set of memory tweaks, but that's about it.

Final Score

3.5 out of 5.

Thanks to Directron for making this review possible.