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SOYO SY-7VCA Review

Another ATX mainboard on VIA Apollo Pro133A for Socket370. The distinguishing feature of this board isa set of four diagnostic LEDs, a beautiful BIOS Start Screen and nice overclocking options.

by FastSite
05/24/2000 | 12:00 AM

VIA's position in the chipset market keeps strengthening. This is evidenced by the growing number ofdifferent mainboards manufactured by this company, which are currently available on the shop shelves. Nomatter what Intel fans would say, there were no other really successful Intel chipsets, which could becalled a worthy replacement of i440BX. That is why all the leading mainboard manufacturers stake theirmainboards built on VIA Apollo Pro133A. Besides, there is another argument in favor of this solution:this month Intel finishes with i440BX manufacturing redirecting all its productive capacities to i810/815/820.However, it seems that factual mainboards on i815 chipset, which could somehow improve the situation on thechipset market, will become available only in the end of summer, to our great disappointment. That's why Intelturns out to be the only one to blame for VIA's superiority today.<%BANNER[article]%>

So, we continue reviewing various mainboards built on VIA Apollo Pro133A. Also bearing in mind Intel's plansconcerning the transfer of its processors into Socket 370 format, the most popular today's board should undoubtedlybe equipped with this particular socket. Thus, we are little by little moving towards these mainboards as well. Youhave already seen Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X Review, and today comes the turn of SOYO SY-7VCA. Although it is the firstreview of a SOYO product on iXBT LABS, this company is quite a large manufacturer of high-quality mainboards. SinceSOYO hardly needs a more detailed presentation, we suggest passing over to the specification of our today's tidbit -SY-7VCA.

Specification

The mainboard is supplied in an ordinary SOYO box, which hasn't been changed for ages already. However,the contents of the package is a bit different from what we are used to. Besides the FDD cable, UltraDMA/66cable and a CD disk with the necessary software and drivers, SOYO 7VCA is also accompanied by three programsfrom Symantec: Norton AntiVrus, Norton Ghost and Norton Virtual Drive. The first two programs are prettyfrequent guests in the mainboard packages that is why we have already mentioned what they are intended for.And the last program is a special utility, which allows creating a virtual CD disk (or a few ones) and usingthem as CDs inserted into a CD-ROM drive. SOYO has long given up the idea of providing their mainboards with adetailed user's manual therefore SY-7VCA is not an exception. The mainboard goes together with a small QuickStart Guide and the full manual comes on a CD disk in pdf-format. This approach is very convenient forexperienced assemblers, however, unsophisticated commencing PC users cannot dig out any detailed info onthe mainboard installation procedure without a working PC.

Closer Look

SOYO has already designed a mainboard on VIA Apollo Pro133A with Slot 1 before. This mainboard was known asSY-6VCA, however, it failed to get widely spread. Nevertheless, the company didn't give in and SY-7VCA is thesecond board on the same chipset. SOYO decided to refrain from copying the previous design with someinsignificant modifications required by a different processor the board was aimed at, Socket370. The newSY-7VCA can boast a totally new exterior and supports all the new Socket370 CPUs: Intel Pentium III FCPGA,Intel Celeron on Coppermine128 core and old Celeron PPGA processors on Mendocino core.

As for VIA Cyrix III, which should also appear in the market within the coming couple of months, we arehappy to point out that this processor is also supported on SY-7VCA. The mainboard is equipped with a specialjumper to ensure Cyrix's correct installation.

There are three DIMM slots on the mainboard, which support up to 1.5GB memory. Like any other mainboard onVIA Apollo Pro133A chipset, SY-7VCA allows using Intel Celeron CPU together with any of the two memory types:66MHz PC66 SDRAM or 100MHz PC100 SDRAM. If you install an Intel Pentium III with a 100MHz FSB, you will be givena larger choice: PC66, PC100 and PC133 SDRAM. And if your system works on Pentium III with a 133MHz system bus,then the memory can be clocked to either 100 or 133MHz, so that you can occupy the DIMM slots with PC100 as wellas with PC133 SDRAM modules. This flexibility of the supported memory is achieved due to the asynchronous VIA ApolloPro133A chipset, which lets you clock the memory to FSB, FSB+PCI and FSB-PCI. However, if the system bus frequency is133MHz, you will be unable to increase the memory bus frequency by another 33MHz, although the chipset supports thisfunction. But this is hardly a serious drawback, because only Enhanced HSDRAM, which is a pretty rare thing in themarket still, seems to be capable of operating properly at such a high working frequency. Speaking about memory weshould also mention that the mainboard supports the exotic VCM SDRAM being a buffered multichannel PC133 SDRAMmanufactured only by NEC.

The CPU configuration on SY-7VCA can be changed via BIOS Setup. In fact, jumpers on this board serve only twomain purposes: clear CMOS function and Cyrix III support. All other parameters including FSB frequency and theclock multiplier (which has actually lost its importance now) are set via BIOS Setup in a section called SOYOCombo Feature.

SOYO SY-7VCA features a rather standard for today expansion slots configuration: 5/1/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AMR/AGP).AGP slot on SY-7VCA as well as on other VIA Apollo Pro133A based boards is universal and supports 3.3V AGP 1x/2xand 1.5V AGP 4x graphics cards. We would like to point out a somewhat extraordinary location of the AMR slot:between the fourth and the fifth PCI slots. So, the fifth PCI slot appears shared with ISA and full-size AGP cardswill as usual block the DIMM clips when installed there.

For the South Bridge in its SY-7VCA SOYO decided to use VIA 686A microchip with more features than VIA 596B. Thisallows reducing the board's cost. In particular, 686A has an integrated PCI-ISA bridge that's why ISA slot doesn'tneed any additional controllers. As far as the full-size expansion cards are concerned, they will fit into any slotexcept ISA.

Another function provided by VIA 686A South Bridge is the possibility to have a software AC'97 sound card. Forthis purpose SY-7VCA is equipped with Sigmatel STAC9721 codec supporting the set of basic functions as well asSigmaTel Surround Stereo Enhancement (SS3D) technology, which can be controlled by a special utility fromSigmatel web-site. The software sound can be disabled via BIOS Setup.

As for the mainboard layout, SOYO SY-7VCA is rather far from being ideal. Only IDE-connectors are put in theirright place according to ATX spec. The power supply connector is located behind DIMM slots, which will lead to greattrouble during the system assembling. In fact, things could have been not that bad if it were not for the FDD connectorsituated in the very center of the board behind the fourth PCI slot. As a result, the cable going from the mainboard tothe floppy drive will drag through the entire case, hinder the cooling and lie in the way during PCI and AGP cardsinstallation. The mainboard is of a standard size and easily fits into all ATX-cases.

The North Bridge of the chipset is equipped with a green heatsink. Socket370 is surrounded by 8 capacitors 1,500uFeach.

We can't leave out a couple of unique features of SY-7VCA board, of course. Once, following ABIT's experience, SOYOstarted providing its mainboards with a possibility to increase CPU Vcore. And now following in MSI's footsteps SOYOprovides its mainboards with a diagnostic system of four LEDs (by MSI this technology is called D-LED). In our casethere are four light emitting diodes on the board, which reflect the booting state of the board. If any problems withsystem booting occur, you can easily detect the cause with the help of 16 possible LED states. However, it is a bitinconvenient that you can't tell anything with the case closed. Nevertheless, we have to admit that this LED diagnosticsystem may appear very helpful.

As for BIOS, we were very surprised with what we saw. And we really had the cause: a special screen opened during thesystem booting. Instead of the usual text info we enjoyed Phoenixnet Graphical Launch Screen just like you can see on theright. You can notice that it shows the processor working frequency, the available memory and connected IDE-devices. However,a new original outlook made BIOS less informative, because the old table with system configuration of an old BIOS containedmuch more data, unlike SOYO SY-7VCA.

On the whole, this BIOS is none other but an ordinary Award version 6.00PG. As usual for VIA chipsets based boards,there are a lot of options for memory timings and PCI and AGP buses configuring. AGP 4x mode and FastWrites can bedisabled via Setup. However, unfortunately, the board doesn't allow assigning IRQs to PCI slots manually. Anothersetting in BIOS Setup, which seems worth mentioning, is CPU In Order Queue Size, which can equal 4 level or 1 levelonly. This option controls processor bus pipelining. In other words, if you set the CPU IOQ Size to 1 level, theprocessor bus will work in a non-pipeline mode, which increases the system stability quite tangibly, duringoverclocking, for instance. The default setting guaranteeing the most optimal performance is 4 level.

Hardware monitoring on SOYO SY-7VCA makes use of the chipset South Bridge (VT82C686A) features. It controlstwo temperatures (CPU and mainboard), the rotations of two fans (there are two fan connectors on the board) andfive voltages. The processor temperature is taken by a special thermal diode integrated into the CPU core, sinceall the processors installed into Socket370 are provided with this sensor.

Overclocking

SOYO mainboards are especially interesting regarding overclocking, because this company, like ABIT, introducesall the possible interesting features aimed at CPU overclocking. The first thing we would like to mention here isthe availability of all the functiones described below in BIOS Setup, which ranks this mainboard as a perfect piecewith jumperfree configuration.

So, the range of the supported FSB frequencies makes 32 values: 66, 68, 75, 80, 83, 85, 90, 95, 100, 103, 105,109, 112, 114, 115, 118, 120, 124, 126, 129, 133, 135, 138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 147, 150, 154, 160 and 166MHz. Herewe would like to point out two advantages. Firstly, the interval below 100MHz wasn't left out of consideration thatis why SOYO SY-7VCA is a nice choice for 66MHz Intel Celeron overclocking. Secondly, the supported FSB frequenciesinclude the values over 150MHz, which is a really rare thing. It allows extreme overclocking of Intel Pentium III500E FCPGA CPUs and the like, which are known for their huge overclocking potential and very often can run at FSBexceeding 150MHz.

The only fly in this ointment is the fact that you won't be able to manually set the AGP divider. As a result,it equals to 1:1 in the interval up to 83MHz, to 2:3 between 85 and 120MHz and to 1:2 starting from 124MHz and up.

SOYO SY-7VCA also allows increasing processor Vcore. In this case it can be increased not necessarily by anabsolute value: 1.5%, 3%, 4.5%, 6%, 7.5%, 9% or 10% relative to the nominal.

Besides the already mentioned stuff, you can also change manually L2 cache latency. Very often this functionturned just irreplaceable when overclocking the processors with the external L2 cache. However, now L2 cache isalmost always on-die, so that we really doubt if this option is that important, especially in the BIOS of aSocket370 mainboard.

Now it's high time we passed over to practice. As usual, we tried to overclock on SOYO SY-7VCA Intel PentiumIII 500 FC-PGA CPU. If you remember, we managed to achieve the maximum of 775MHz with this processor onChaintech 6ATA4 mainboard. However, on SY-7VCA this CPU proved quite unstable at the frequencies over 750MHz.

Performance

The testing system was configured as follows:

Here are the results:


Speed characteristics aren't the main argument when you choose a mainboard from a range of products based on the samechipset. The performances of different products differ so much, that you can't rely only on the benchmarks when selectingthe right board. It's much more important to pay attention to the special features of a product.

The tests show that SOYO SY-7VCA proves quite mediocre. As for stability, we can call it a "nothing special" board:SY-7VCA is a nice piece.

Conclusions

Although SOYO SY-7VCA aimed quite high among VIA Apollo Pro133A based boards, our study showed that some very originalfeatures of this product don't have the desired positive effect. Nevertheless, we can characterize this piece as ahigh-quality, well-done board with a number of interesting features as well as with some drawbacks.

Highs:

Lows:

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