SOYO, a well-known mainboard producer, announced on Friday its two Socket 754 mainboards for AMD Athlon 64 microprocessors featuring the mainstream form-factor. The company is not really aggressive in terms of product announcements these days and is about two weeks behind its rivals with its platforms for AMD64 technology.

However, SOYO impressed me more than other memory makers by saying that its SY-K8USA DRAGON Ultra is based on AMD8151 AGP tunnel, not ALi M1687, as we previously re-reported an unofficial source. Apparently, considering the fact that ALi M1687 resembles AMD8151 much, I believe that the M1687 has always been a remarked AMD 8151.

The new mainboards from SOYO are designed for totally different types of end-users. The AMD-based SYK8USA provides quite some additional features, including Gigabit Ethernet, Serial ATA-150 RAID, FireWire, etc, while the NVIDIA-based SY-CK8 DRAGON Plus cannot really offer the same broad range of extra capabilities, but is also priced tangibly lower - $139 in contrast to $189 of the SY-K8USA DRAGON Ultra.

Please have a look at what the cost-effective AMD64 mainboard from SOYO has to offer:

• Supports Socket 754 Athlon 64 processors with HyperTransport link;
• NVIDIA nForce3 150 single-chip core-logic;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or up to 2GB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory;
• 5 PCI slots, an AGP Pro 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 integrated controller;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100Mb/s Ethernet adapter;
• 6-channel CMI 9739 audio solution;
• Overclocking and tuning functions include CPU PSB, core voltage and multiplier, memory and AGP Pro voltages. Component safety features include, on-board voltage monitors, CPU fan speed monitor, CPU temperature monitoring through flexible thermal sensor and CPU overheating sensors;
• ATX Form Factor;
• List price of the SY-CK8 DRAGON Plus Ultra is $139.

What is probably the most interesting about the SY-K8USA DRAGON Ultra is that it was demonstrated as an ALi M1687-based product earlier this year. In fact, ALi M1687 has always attracted much attention of the press given that it looked just like 8151 AGP 8x controller from AMD – it featured AMD’s own heat-spreader we know well by AMD K6-series of microprocessors packaged in AMD’s Malaysian facility. Now that SOYO changes one AGP tunnel for another, we can be almost sure that ALi’s M1687 is AMD8151.

Fairly speaking, since ALi has decided to choose single-chip approach with its core-logic products for AMD64 processors, there was no point for it to develop its own separate AGP 8x tunnel chip. As a result, AMD and ALi could reach an agreement under terms of which AMD supported ALi by providing AGP tunnels.

Take a look at the final specs of AMD/ALi-based mainboard from SOYO:

• Supports Socket 754 Athlon 64 processors with HyperTransport link;
• AMD8151 AGP Tunnel and ALi M1563 I/O Tunnel;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or up to 2GB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM memory;
• 5 PCI slots, an AGP Pro 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 integrated controller;
• 1 extra Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133 channel (ALi M5283 controller);
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID capabilities (ALi M5283 controller);
• 3 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet adapter (VIA VT6120 controller);
• 6-channel CMI 9739 audio solution;
• Probably some overclocking and tuning functions;
• ATX Form Factor;
• List price of the SY-K8USA DRAGON Ultra is $189.

Mainboards are expected to be available shortly because SOYO even announced the pricing.