SOYO K8USA is the first retail board that based on the ALi M1687 chipset. As we all know, the ALi M1687 chipset is quite a mature chipset by itself since it was ready way before the A64 launch. With ALi's dedicated R&D efforts on the chipset. SOYO K8USA Dragon has one of the best feature set that you can find on mainstream K8 board. SOYO did not only just complete the board with a feast of features, it also come with a multimedia sigma box which comes optional. The standard features of the board includes USB 2.0, 1394, Gigabit Ethernet, 6 channel audio, 1394 and overclocking features. It also comes with the an additional ATA133 channel for PATA in RAID 0/1 and 2 SATA ports for RAID 0/1. 4 PATA can be attached to the standard south bridge.

SOYO K8USA has excellent performance. In fact out of the many categories we tested, it either comes out top or second. Although the differences between all platforms are quite similar. The most apparent difference is in the IDE performance. CCWS and BWS reveals excellent desktop and multimedia bench scores. It seems that the only challenger in this case would be just SiS 755/964 as the other two chipset VIA K8T800/8237 and NF3 150 are no way comparable in disk performance so far (until maybe new drivers are released).

Installation of this board is straightforward as it is all well documented on board or in the manual. The only thing I feel that could be improved is to move the capacitors around the socket 754 further away as the heatsink's clips might scratch it during installation.

In terms of overclocking, this board has very good range of FSB that you can choose from ( up to 512Mhz). DDR, HT voltages can be set as well. It is a pity that Vcore is only limited up to 1.7v. In our tests, we managed to bring the CPU up to 230MHz FSB at default voltage, DDR 2.8v at CAS 2.5, 8-4-4. Although we can POST at 230Mhz, it hung in Quake 3 test and remained unstable at that speed. The memory benchmark score was like 35xx/35xx which is amazing. We will experiment more when we have time on that.

This is a nice board to own if you intend to go wireless in the near future. It has all the necessary things for your expansion in the near future. Recommended!

Suggested Retail : ~ NA Online Pricing when available

Discuss & read more

Pros 好处:

• 6 Channel audio
• USB 2.0 
• Gigabit LAN
• 1394
• IDE RAID, SATA RAID
• Sigma Box

Cons 坏处:

• Vcore range too restrictive to 1.7v

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

Gold Award