Reviews
	Click here for the News Archive
		Soyo SY-7IZB+
		A Socket 370 - Good features and perfect for upgrading your AT System
		Most of you out there in cyberspace probably have one or to old AT cases containing what used to be the top of the line computer system. Also to most of you, upgrading to a PII, P!!! or Celeron would mean replacing the case, keyboard, and mouse. If you're like me your old case probably has some sentimental value or just keeps getting left behind after the garage sale. Now you have an alternative to put new life into it. Take out that old mobo , and nail it on the wall, it will probaly be happier as a wall clock these days. Now lets get down to business. The Soyo 7IZb+ supports the Socket 370 which currently supports the Celeron PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) in speeds of 300-533 MHz. This board has a very nice selection of bus speeds. Front Side Bus Options (FSB/PCI) 66/33 75/33 83/41 84/41 100/33 103/34 105/35 110/36 112/37 115/38 120/40 124/31 124/41 133/33 133/44 140/35 150/35
		Due to the small size, as in the case with most AT boards, installation is a breeze. Having 3 ISA expansion slots is a plus for anyone wanting to keep the existing ISA peripherals instead of tacking them to the wall with the your old motherboard. I'm sure you have at least 3 ISA peripherals that can you can use from upgrading your older AT system.
		Features: Socket 370 Intel PPGA Celeron 300 ~ 500MHz Auto-detect CPU voltage Chip set: Intel 440ZX PC98, ACPI, Ultra DMA/33 FSB & Multiplier: Supports up to 256 MB of main memory Max Memory module size supported 128MB Cache: 128K CPU built-in cache Power-on by modem or alarm Wake-0n-Lan support (WOL) & SB-LINK Includes Hardware Monitoring and Hardware Doctor Utility Memory: DIMM X 3, Up to 768MB memory Expansion Bus: 1 AGP, AGP 1.0 compliance 4 PCI, 32-Bit master 3 ISA, 16-Bit IO: Winbond 83977TF/EF 2 Serial ports, 16550 Fast UART compatible 1 Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP mode 2 USB ports, Rev. 1.0 1 PS/2 Keyboard 1 PS/2 Mouse FDD, 1.2MB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB IrDA connector IDE: UltraDMA-33 PIO mode 4 Bootable from LS120, ZIP drive Power management: APM 1.2 ACPI 1.0 BIOS: Award PnP BIOS DMI 2.0 2MB flash memory Hardware Monitoring: CPU Temp. monitoring, overheat warning Other connectors: Suspend switch and LED Wake-On-Lan connector EISCA Fan connector SB-Link Form Factor: ATX, 30.5cm X 17cm Other Features: CPU Voltage Auto Detecting (CPU PnP) Wake-On-Ring Wake-On-Alarm Accessories: 1 CD-ROM disc Intel driver patch for Windows95 Intel AGP Vgart driver Intel Bus Master driver for Windows95 Shuttle System Manager Multi-language manuals 1 Easy Manual 1 IDE cable, 1 FDD cable Power-on by Keyboard
		Soyo did a nice job in designing the BIOS for this motherboard. The CPU is set via a soft menu and the cpu voltage is auto detected. The only jumper needing to be set, is the CPU FSB/AGP BUS selection for 66/100 which is designed for overclocking. The cpu bus speed settings also indicates the exact PCI bus speed instead of (1/2, 1/ 3, 1/ 4).For example: 115/38 (meaning 115 MHz FSB and 38 MHz PCI bus). When it comes to stability, I'd have to say that this board has plenty of it. I was able to run my 300A CPU at 495MHz without any voltage tweaks. That CPU usually requires a little extra juice. I bumped up the speed to 540 MHz and almost got into Windows 98 before my Seagate HD decided to make scrambled eggs out of my data on the spinnning platters. That HD didn't like the higher system bus speeds. One interesting feature I noticed in the BIOS, was the IRQ assignment setting for the PCI slots. You can manually set which PCI slot gets which IRQ. This is a nery nice feature for fixing IRQ conflict problems.
		Test System Mid Tower ATX Case w/ 250W PS, Intel Celeron PPGA 300a overclocked to 495 MHz, Soyo SY-7IZB+, 64 MB of PC100 RAM, Seagate 4.3 Gig EIDE UDMA Hard Drive, 3dFX Voodoo3 3000 AGP Card w/ 16MB, Sonic S70 Sound Card, 36X CDROM, Kingston 10 Base-T NIC, Windows 98 w/ DX6.1
		Overclocking Overclocking this motherboard was pretty easy. All the tweaks are done via the BIOS which is carried over from their Slot 1 BX boards. For not having a voltage setting, this motherboard does a decent job in the stability dept.
		Benchmarks WinTune 98 Offline Test Results CPU (1) Intel Celeron 300A@ 450 MHz Video Board 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP Video Mode 1024x768@16bits/pixel RAM 64 MB OS Windows 98 4.10.1998 Area Tested Value CPU Integer 1447.835 MIPS CPU Floating Point 577.6065 MFLOPS Video(2D) 131.7981 MPixels/s Direct3D 183.2872 MPixels/s OpenGL 12.8551 MPixels/s Memory 873.7405 MB/s Cached Disk 100.9314 MB/s Uncached Disk 2.709748 MB/s
		This is a respectable showing for the Celeron 300a on this board. Also of note are the solid disk numbers! On to some ZD Winbench 99 Scores...
		3D Mark 99 Max 3DMark 4241 CPU 3DMark 4853
		Final Reality 2D Image Processing 5.28 3D Performance 4.58 Bus Transfer Rate 7.02 Overall Reality Marks 5.16
		Those are some pretty high scores for this setup. Upgrading your old 486 sytem to this would be a nice investment. All of these benchmarks were done on a system with no tweaks and using the default video drivers.
		Overall Impression This board is a good option for upgading your existing AT system. For overclocking, this board should handle just about anything you can throw at it. However, your peripherals will be limited to the PCI speeds. It's a good thing the BIOS tells you the exact bus speed. Plus the motherboard itself comes with $150 free software. The software alone pays for the motherboard. The software bundle includes the full versions of: Norton Ghost, Norton Antivirus, and Norton Virtual Drive.
		This Soyo Motherboard gets a Temp-O-Meter Rating of.... 90
		-Tim
	Got something meaningful to say or do you just want to flap your gums!? Emailage right here!
	This site is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The contents are the views and opinion of the author and/or his associates. Copyright ©1999 Hot Hardware All rights reserved