SOYO KT-400. worth the wait?

[teqwiz]

Just got my new MOBO. $200.00 and change.

Memory got lost in the mail though and am sitting here waiting for UPS to show up!

Ive been so excited, and though quite a let down, It's probably better that I'm not rebuilding my system without reading the manual. I never realized all the good information they have in them. The BIOS looks incredible to me as I've been running this MSI K7T Pro-2 for about a year and a half now. Great in it's day. Cool freebies came with it too.
Smart card reader and flash mem interface. Straight from the camera to the rig. Can't wait.

Anyone got a stick of DDR I can Borrow? I'll give it back. Promise

 

[RideFree]

teqwiz,

I'll be expecting to see some news like, "Dragon blows the doors-off Epox 8K5A2+" in the thread that's pinned in the number one slot on this forum. AllRight!

Got some Dragons. Got some Soyos ? possibly the #1 m/b of all time =SY-6BA+IV ? still got two running right here & across town.

I'm skeptical of all the new KT400s for any or all of the following.
1. They appeared "rushed"
2. I'm willing to bet that there will be a 400a.
3. This was a "must" for VIA as SIS is coming-on like a freight train.
4. The scrap with Intel has hurt them.
5. Six months from now, all the 400 boards will be on rev. 1.02, 1.1, 1.2 or something similar.
6. The KT333 was (in all reality) just a "turbo" KT266b (Part of the reason there was no KT333b) IMHO

Just the first one-half dozen that comes to mind.

 

[teqwiz]

This is my first experience going ahead of the pack on unproven technology, but it interests me so much that I decided to chance it. For all the research I've done, It seems to me that this was a good decision. Soyo seemed to have a pretty unstable history at times a few years back. My first hesitation to buy it was that it came highly recommended from the counter clerk at CompUSA. Those people scare me because they are so opinionated about technology, Brands and such, and I've listened to they're sales pitch at times, wondering what manual they were quoting. Others I've met really knew they're stuff too, but few. I am building a brand new system from scratch with this board. My fifth, though I usually use proven, (MSI, ASUS, thats been on the market for 6 monthes.) highly reccommended parts. MOBO's especially. I bought a Lian Li pc 70 to house it and that will be my first case mod also. Hopefully I'll have a website to post all the progress, benchmarks and such over the next two weeks. Will keep you informed. BTW if you know any benchmarking utils that are not too much $, I would appreciate some info. Have Sandra and 3D mark 2002se. mem and specific bus parameter BMs in peticular. Thanks. Have WCPUID also.

P.S. see cases & cooling Help me mod my case!

 

[teqwiz]

Installation of Soyo KT 400 Dragon Ultra Platinum Observations.

HSF, Tt Volcano 7+ Smooth as silk. ZIF socket slightly higher off the PCB to allow clearance for the tab to slide over the anchor easily. This has been a source of aggravation on older boards. the clip is quite close to the MEM slot 1 though , so I'll probable need to remove the ram to service later. Not a big deal.

The clearance from the AGP slot to the ram retainer in the open position is 5/8 of an inch, and the capacitor to the rear of the AGP appears to have been moved upwards slightly to avoid bending it while inserting the video card. Both these simple improvements will facillitate the upgrading of the Video card nicely, Somewhat of a pain at times. Owners of VooDoo5 cards will understand what I mean. There is a capacitor directly to the rear and inline with the slot 8 7/8 of an inch from the face plate of the Card,(where you plug the monitor in) which might pose a problem for longer cards. It's only 3/8 of an inch high, so maybe not.

Break for a Vanilla Coke. My weakness.

 

[teqwiz]

The Board itself is well laid out. Not crowded or having areas where chips and junpers are all crammed together. This is a great improvement over other boards I've serviced. See it HERE I don't like the position of the ATX connector though. too far across the board for owners of ccases where the PSU has an enclosure that limits the opening for the upper bay to over by the CDROM drive. To route around like that does not leave enough length in the connector wires to do a hidden or secured wiring job for some cases. I like them hidden and not streched across the HSF myself.

The sigma box Connections to the board itself, are not clear in the provided, (folded piece of paper) instructions. You'd think that with the photo reproduction technology that we have today, That someone might Produce a clear enough close up, or at least color code the ends!:disgust:

 

[Insane3D]

I'll be expecting to see some news like, "Dragon blows the doors-off Epox 8K5A2+" in the thread that's pinned in the number one slot on this forum. AllRight!

You will have a long wait for that my friend....KT400 is MARGINALLY faster at best...

 

[teqwiz]

WE will see. Got to put it together first. Works better with electricity. Besides, the BH's still haven't gotten the mem here. tracking sez Thurs.

 

[teqwiz]

First Benchmark. This board is very fast. Slipped out of my hands and hit the floor. INSTANTLY! Still waiting for UPS............

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: teqwiz
First Benchmark. This board is very fast. Slipped out of my hands and hit the floor. INSTANTLY! Still waiting for UPS............

LOL! Good one..

Seriously though...do keep us posted. I've had bad luck with some of Soyo's early Dragon boards, but they seem to be putting out some nice, albeit way overpriced, boards lately. I'm always open to try new stuff...

Keep us posted!

 

[teqwiz]

Since I'm still waiting for the mem to show up, I thought I might post some observations as I do the install. This board was 205$ USD, and I agree they are high priced, But I've saved for this for about 7 monthes and am enjoying every second. ( as much as possible under the circumstances). I only have a T-bird 1.4 to put in it for now, because I'm waiting for the 2600+ in two weeks, or three............. I'll post the total specs soon ,as I'm building a case mod and hosting it in a couple of weeks.

btw, I didn't really drop it. Just kidding!

 

[Piper1]

Just purchased this board too. Got it at Newegg for $181 with FREE shipping. Should have it by Friday...I hope

 

[teqwiz]

:Q Good may be some competition!

 

[teqwiz]

DAMmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Smokin' Board Whoa. 512 XMS Corsair. T-bird 1400. load Win 2 K in less than a minute! A real improvement! Yeeee Haw. will post Sandra Benches tommorrow. I am quite pleased. I think that when I put her 2600+ into her, She'll go straight to the logon screen, hope I never have to use F8.

 

[teqwiz]

My Little 1400 t bird has a hard time keeping up with the mem, but I have tweaked pretty good, and seems stable now. Haven't overclocked it yet. After I get the 2600+, then I will mess with the overclock.

Sandra mem B/W Ram int. buff B/W 1465
Ram float 1451

Dhrystone ALU 3830 mips
Whetstone FPU 1903 mflops

System settings Normal, CPU and Mem set to auto.

I can tell you that the mother board will not boot with a stock Volcano 7+.the fan speed wire(yellow, needs to be connected wth the fan eg. black red yellow to cpu fan 1 because of cpuburn utility. The bios will think that the fan doesn't work, and shut it down. Pretty cool .
I modified mine and removed the extra connector and added the wire to HSF conect. Booted perfectly. Originally I had an Antec jet cool and ran at 135 f. Switching to the Vol 7+ knocked it down to 110 f, where I am right now. That's 43 c.

 

[teqwiz]

Bios upgrade last night. Added support for 2600+ YES!. Still running my 1600+ stock bios gave me 3Dmark 2001se score of 9500 with Corsair 3200 XMS mem@ 166 cas 2, XP @ 1393. PCI /3. 66/33. not bad with no OC. OC mem only to test B/W @ 412, cas 2 stable but only slight improvement of 9643. Not that much better. Sandra posted above.

Just flashing the bios produced a stock setting score in 3Dmark2001se of 10688 @ all reset to default Normal performance setting. WOW! Can't wait to OC this sucker now! Testing....................

 

[Insane3D]

Nice job...keep the info coming!

 

[teqwiz]

Most stable config.System perf. Turbo manual 133 for CPU. Manual multiplier 10.5 Ram @ 166 manual settings with my ram Corsair 3200 cas 2, 2t, 4 bank 2t 5 2t 1t command and fast writes on AGP perf fast. Setatw 1t b/c it's the only way to stablize over 133 speed in mem config.

This setup is very fast and presently more stable than any combo I've tried. And I tried em all!
atw @ 1t is the key, though I could not tell you why. I don't under stand the complete settings table enough to explain it thouroughly or intelligently. I'm upgrading my processor as all the subsystems seem to wait for it constantly.

A bench in Dacris, confiimed this. Sandra also. Constant 9000s in 3dmark2001 se. UT2003 maxed out the settings. No Prob at all. No lag in frame rate. Other CPU/MEM configs benched faster but proved unstable in game play. Gonna OC the CPU next.
I expect the new AMD chips with 333 FSB will open up a whole new world for this board.

 

[teqwiz]

[ WCPUID Version 3.1 (c) 1996-2002 By H.Oda! ]

Processor #1 : AMD Athlon XP (Model 6) / 7EA75693
Platform : Socket A (Socket 462)
Vendor String : AuthenticAMD
CPU Type : Original OEM Processor (0)
Family : 6 (7)
Model : 6 (6)
Stepping ID : 2 (2)
Brand : ----
APIC : ----
Name String : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+

Internal Clock : 1470.00 MHz
System Bus : 280.00 MHz DDR
System Clock : 140.00 MHz
Multiplier : 10.5

L1 I-Cache : 64K Byte
L1 D-Cache : 64K Byte
L1 T-Cache : ----
L1 Cache : ----
L2 Cache : 256K Byte
L2 Speed : 1470.00 MHz (Full)

MMX Unit : Supported
SSE Unit : Supported
SSE2 Unit : Not Supported
MMX2 Unit : Supported
3DNow! Unit : Supported
3DNow!+ Unit : Supported

Host Bridge : 1106:3189.00 [VIA Apollo KT400]
South Bridge : 1106:3177.00 [VIA VT8233A]
VGA Device : 10DE:0250.A3 [NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600]
Memory Size : 512M Byte
Memory Clock : 200 Mhz

OS Version : Windows 2000 Version 5.00.2195 Service Pack 3

Finally got my most stable Config with unlocked 1600+. Vcore is 1.775, MEM is 2.8 and AGP is 1.6 volts. Been very stable after first MEM errors. set tWTR to 3T and mem settings 2 5 2 with 4 bank and 1 Dimm and 1T command. 140 FSB, the system IDs the CPU as 1700+. Odd. Note: South bridge id IDed as 8233a instead of 8235. That's interesting. Currently 112 degrees F, 44 degrees C. Chassis is 95/35, respectively.

NEXT: Unlocking time!