Soyo SY P4I Fire Dragon

[Bing Fung]

Click here for the big picture, it's worth it

I'm absolutely in love with this board :P 8O

It's a limited edition that's fully loaded. The Fire Dragon gets it's name for the onboard firewire support. It also has built in 6 ch audio, USB 2.0, Smart card reader, ATA 133 RAID Controller. Uber sexy name as well!

From what I have read Soyo makes very high quality boards that are geared for serious overclocking. Layout of the board design looks to be impecably engineered with a lot of thought given to wire routing. Look at the capacitors, they are all lined up straighter than a row of Marines. Apperently Soyo is making donations to the victims of 911 for every one of these limited edition boards sold, hence the USA emblem on the chip-set's heat sink.

http://www.soyousa.com

FEATURES

PROCESSOR

Supports Intel ® Socket-478 Pentium 4

CHIPSET

Intel Brookdale(i845) chipset

Support 400 MHz FSB

SYSTEM MEMORY

Two 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets support up to 2GB

Supports DDR266

EXPANSION SLOTS

Six 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (V2.2 compliant)

One AGP Pro slot (support 1x/2x/4x mode with 1.5V)

On Board Audio Subsystem

On board CMI 8738 Audio chip to provide 6 channels audio solution

Supports optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs

On Board Ultra I/O CHIP

Two RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)

One Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)

One FDD port (supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)

Provides IrDA/FIR ports with optional cable for transceiver

Provides 4 USB ports (2*rear, 2*pin header)

Provides 2 IEEE1394 ports (1*port, 1*pin header)

Ultra DMA IDE Ports

Four independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for IDE Raid)

Supports up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100/133

Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports

Boot-Block Flash BIOS

Award PCI BIOS with ACPI function

Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE/SCSI/CD-ROM/FDD LS120/ZIP

2M byte Flash ROM

Board Dimensions

Four Layer PCB, 30.5cm x 23cm(12" x 9.05")

ATX form factor

Enhanced PC Health Monitoring

On-board voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore

CPU fan speed monitor

CPU temperature monitoring through flexible thermal sensor

DOUBLE STACK BACK-PANEL I/O CONNECTORS

PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports

Two USB ports

One RJ45 connector

Two D-Sub 9-pin male serial port

One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port

Audio I/O: LINE-OUT x1, LINE-IN x1, MIC JACK x1

One Game port




Bing

[Lex]

Bada Bing, Bada Board, very SWEET!!! So, your converting to Pentium from AMD Bing?

Traitor if so, lol.

Lex

[Bing Fung]

Hehe, well it woudn't be the first time I jumped ship... I have always professed to be an Intel Guy.... I felt like a traitor going to AMD :LOL:

I want this board, however the cost of it and a P4 2.2 is just through the roof. The difference in price vs an AMD solution is the price of my GF4 8O

I just wanted to show this board for it is coveted.




Bing

[SiliGoose]

Very sexy indeed (except for that foreign socket )




-Sili

[Lex]

Pretty board Bing. But pretty don't feed the bulldog. Stats? May be as good as it looks, I dunno. Personally, I have come to somewhat gauge the design of a board by how few capacitors it has on it. That may or may not be a valid gauge. But it seems boards that have the most sophisticated power distribution and such, have the least capacitors. This can be seen comparing the Asus A7M266-D dual board, and the comparative MSI ant Tyan boards. You will see many more capacitors on the others. I read where the Asus had the most sophisticated power distribution.

Lex

[Bing Fung]

Well Lex, you may be right about the capacitors but in the end does it really matter? Don't even get me started on your Tyan with its advanced power distribution...

Here is a review

So it pretty and fast to boot.

Sure the Abit BD7 is the top P4 DDR board right now, but this has so many features , I could be certainly be swayed by it's good looks.




Bing

[Lex]

No, the Tyan had quite a few capacitors on it Bing. I was speaking of the new Asus A7M266-D I got, as having the advancements in power distribution. I read that in a comparison at lostcircuits.com.

Your right though, they sure lined those dudes up perty on the Soyo and it is a nice board, if you like Intel chips and more importantly, their prices, lol..

Lex

[Bing Fung]

Hehe, sorry 'bout the Tyan Lex :LOL:

No Doubt, Asus makes reputabily the most stable boards on the market, however the amount of caps would not make or break a board for me. For me it's about speed, stability, Over clockability and Features. But thanks for opening my eyes.


I have always been a Abit and Asus fan, but other players are starting to teach the old dogs new tricks, and Soyo is one of those playas....

One board I have been keeping my eye on is an Asus A7V 333. It's got all the features I want, however Asus really does not implement a stable RAID control on their boards. It does have a Highpoint RAID controller, however Asus and their implementation of the controller tends to be buggy at best. Maybe they have improved this?




Bing