Soyo Dragon+ Kt266A?

[GunDog]

vyrt1go,
I had a s/b live! on my old motherboard (asus a7m266), the sound on the dragon sounds just as good or better. I think its better myself, though I'm not an Audiophile. To many years flying helo's
The 10/100 Via Lan chip also works well, mine is reported to be working at 100 mps I can live with that! I was using a netgear nic before and it reported 10 mps.
One thing I've found, dont set the nic for tx full duplex, set to regular full duplex. I found a slight lag with the tx setting.

I hope this helps you to decide on the Dragon Plus! Other than the long boot time, this board is the BEST KT266A soluation availiable. IMHO

Cheers,

Gundog
Systems
Website

 

[MrCraphead]

Personally, I'd be more concerned with features than straight up SPEED. 2%-3% isn't gonna make that much of a difference for me......

 

[Maki]

Then the Soyo has better sound and a NIC. The MSI has USB 2.0. I'm not sure how the raid implementations compare. (I THINK they are the same.)

The two boards were pretty neck and neck with me. I wanted better than AC97 sound and the C-MEDIA sound definitely delivered and I didn't need USB 2.0.

Should I ever need USB 2.0 I can factor the cost of an add in USB card to the 2.0 device I'm buying. (Since I'm only using 1 PCI slot on this machine (for a I/O Magic PDVR TV board) I can spare a PCI slot. I love all the integrated devices on this thing. )

Still, my old MSI K7 Turbo was so solid that I would have no problems buying another motherboard from them.

 

[MrCraphead]

No, not all the RAID functions are the same. The Soyo board allows you to connect up to 8 IDE devices, where as others will only allow you to use the RAID connectors if you're actually USING RAID, not as normal ATA/100 connectors. Gotta be careful.......

 

[Maki]

Can it boot off the Promise controller, then? (When not used as a raid controller.)

I could never get my MSI to recognize my add in promise ata controller. That promise controller was way faster than the Via. I'd like to switch to that in my Soyo if I can.

 

[MrCraphead]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but yes, you CAN boot off the RAID controller. You should be able to on any board.....

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

does anyone know if the alpha 8045 fits on this board? it wont fit on the k7v dragon, any luck with the +?

 

[tchinhe]

I am running mine with the 8045.

 

[NicColt]

>Of course there is the smartcard reader but what do I need that for

for example, I can get a special smartcard from my bank and when I do online banking or investing force my accounts to read the smartcard to complete my login so even if someone hacks my logon they would still not be able to get in. Soon the same would go for encrypting files if you want to, you can encrypt files and be forced to have a smartcard to decrypt them. The same would go for Satelite systems where they will encrypt the box codes once a month ect... The same will go for software, where it will include a smartcard in order to use, activate or play the game. It's just a matter of time.

 

[MSNY]

Even if I never used the SCR who cares, it comes with 2 extra USB ports.
That works for me. Even Tom's hardware rates this the better of 11 other kt266a boards. For
once I agree with him...lol

System:
Athlon 1800+
Soyo Dragon Plus
Inwin Q-500 Tower Case
Thermoright SK-6, Sunon 38cfm fan
Elsa Gladic Ultra 64meg
512 meg Crucial RAM (2 x 256)
Viewsonic PF795 19"
2 - 30 gig hard Maxtor drives
48x Creative CDROM
24x 10x 40x Plextor CDRW
Enermax EG365P-VE PS 431w
No additional cards installed.

 

[Maki]

There is one thing I am beginning to note about this board. That new electronic smell hasn't worn off yet. I'm starting to get concerned that maybe the power supply or something on the motherboard is frying.

Absolutely no operational issues with the machine itself. Just has that warm electronics smell going on too long and that is making me nervous.

I wonder if I miswired the smart card reader? I did miswire the add on sound thingy. (Which results in windows detecting no sound card. FYI. That was frustrating.)

Time to open the case this evening and give it the snort test.

 

[Hokalus]

Does anyone know anywhere that sells the Soyo Dragon + in the UK?

 

[Maki]

The Snort Test results --

The new electronic smell was the smart card reader.

After disconnecting it I no longer have an issue with it.

 

[DefRef]

Oooh, this answers my question about this board. I've got a Abit BE6-II with 4 HDs on the ATA66 channels and CD-ROM, DVD and Zip on the ATA33 side. I've been looking for a mobo that could do this since I decided I was going to go Athlon, so this is good news.

 

[Heinrich]

If I install this board and do a NON-RAID setup, can I easily convert later to a RAID setup or will that involve a complete format and re install?

 

[Smith]

Heinrich -



<< If I install this board and do a NON-RAID setup, can I easily convert later to a RAID setup or will that involve a complete format and re install? >>



No, but that has nothing to do with the Dragon +, it has to do with the bus master drivers that the windows OS will use. It's
either:

The Ultra Family ATA drivers or Promise Raid IDE drivers.

Under windows 2000 & xp these are installed when the OS is installed. I beleive in other OS it's done in device manager.
There is also a board jumper that sets it either way, something the similar MSI board does not have.

If you go one way then want to switch, reinstall the OS is the only way to make that happen, nothing to do with the Dragon +.

 

[Tisual]

I highly recommend this board.
This is my first soyo board and I'm impressed with the quality and feaures.
I use all the features, sound,raid, lan, smart card under win2k.

Only problem I had with the board is that the raid drivers on the cd for win2k are the
wrong drivers. I spent about 4 hours trying to get raid to install with win2k
then finally checked the website to learn, oops, the ones on the cd don't work right.

I never even thought about a smart card reader on a pc before. But since
having one was a freebie its a cool toy to play with.

The cards can be bought blank from http://basiccard.com/ . Cards can be bought for 25.00 for 10.
I edited this, earlier I put where I got mine, but I paid 10.00 each, just searched and found the above for 2.50 each.
Its an interesting technology to learn.

 

[tchinhe]

Tisual,
Can you name a few uses for the smart card? I would love to play with it and see how I can utilize my equipment. thanks.

 

[sygyzy]

I too am interested in the smartcard reader. THG says it even comes with Smartcards. Can you program the cards? I think the ideal feature is if they made the smart cards act as security cards. That way it will only boot up if you place the card in the reader. How cool would that be?

As for the poster who thought that it was cool when Windows XP asked him what he wanted to do when he plugged in his USB camera, that is a feature of the operating system, not the motherboard. I know that seems obvious but by your post it seemed like you were confused.

Also for the poster who takes something like 1:20 to boot up. That is way too slow especially with Windows XP. I boot up in 30-33 and that embarasses me. Go download Microsoft's bootvis. It will speed up your bootup. Some people went from 30 to 20 seconds. Amazing!

 

[GunDog]

<< I too am interested in the smartcard reader. THG says it even comes with Smartcards. Can you program the cards? I think the ideal feature is if they made the smart cards act as security cards. That way it will only boot up if you place the card in the reader. How cool would that be? >>



I didn't get any smartcards with my board



<< Also for the poster who takes something like 1:20 to boot up. That is way too slow especially with Windows XP. I boot up in 30-33 and that embarasses me. Go download Microsoft's bootvis. It will speed up your bootup. Some people went from 30 to 20 seconds. Amazing! >>



I have managed to cut the boot time down to 1 min. I really doubt this bootvis this will work with this board (but have no clue what this is). The reason why I say that, it takes the system 20-30 secs just for the boot screen to show. When it gets past that point I can enter bios or continue to load windows.

Microsofts's bootvis? I have no idea?? Do you have a link or can point me in the general direction? Thanks

Gundog

My Systems

 

[sygyzy]

Here you go!

Microsoft's BootVis

 

[DoubleL]

The Soyo is a good board like all the other KT266A boards but I wouldn't put much in that review where it beats the Asus and the Epox, That Darth is the joke of the day or was last week

 

[DARTHSINDER]

I have been happy with mine, no problems...but don't really expect them either. It has a lot of features for the money!!

 

[KEV1N]

I have this board too, and I say it rocks.

Has anybody tried to fit the Alpha 8045 on this? Does the board have the CPU HSF retention holes so I could possibly fit this heatsink to the mobo instead of the clips?

 

[ShadowFox]

i've heard from a lot of people that they have the 8045 on their board without modification, and yes it has the holes for mounting.

WOOHOO just got internet back!!!