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One of the first boards to market featuring the SIS 645 DDR chipset, the Soyo SY-P4S brings a stunning appearance to the table. A black PCB, purple PCI slots and yellow RAID connectors characterize the physical layout. A bundled SPDIF and front panel 4 port USB 2.0 interface are among the best in the business. Opulent BIOS configuration possibilities do the rest to pull every string the PC Industry has at this point to set new standards. Unfortunately, though, we found that not all that glitters is gold. What good is a USB 2.0 connector when there is no hardware to support it. What good are fancy BIOS screens if all they do is change some screen text without prompting any changes in the PCI registers. We do have some more questions and a lot more answers throughout the review.
Silicon Integrated Systems were among the first to openly embrace the DDR333 or PC2700 memory concept for their Pentium4 platform enabled by the SIS 645 -961 chipset. In contrast to the VIA P4X chipset, the SIS "645" chipset has had the official blessing from Intel, not only that but it appears as if some of the Intel ideas of how to approach the P4-DDR solutions were at least standing godfather to the SIS 645 NorthBridge. Aside from the -45, there are a few other similarities between the i845D and the SIS645 chipsets, amongst which are the dynamic bus inversion (DBI), the lack of support for registered DIMMs and quite a few other coincidences.
Regardless of these ponderings, the SIS645 has been one of our favorite toys in the past when it came down to show off the potential of DDR paired with the P4. Even though the last testbed in form of the SIS 645 reference board still had to cope with the malaises of the Willamette core, it was (still is) one hell of a fast sucker, however, we were advised that production boards based on the same chipset would not show any performance advantage over comparable Intel i845 boards.
Big deal, anyone can talk, let's look at the real thing, in this case, the Soyo SY-P4S Dragon Ultra. In many ways, Soyo is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you get. With the recent series of Dragon boards, the company appears to focus on the high-end market, bundling a luxurious set of features with their boards. Furthermore, Soyo are setting themselves apart from the competition by the choice of color, meaning a black PCB with Cardinal-purple PCB slots and yellow IDE (RAID) interfaces.
Will the technical features of the board stand up to the optical appearance? Will, further, the performance be a worthy counterpart of the technical specs? Most of all, will the Dragon Ultra hold what it promises? Read on! (I must have spent too much time on Tech-Report lately, Grin)
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