SOYO Dragon Ultra – SIS 645 Mainboard

Introduction

Okay folks. As most of you know when the Pentium 4 processor first came out with its socket 423 packaging and Rambus RD Ram it wasn’t really a very attractive solution to the main stream buyers. It wasn’t really a very consumer friendly solution giving consumers little or no option in the type of memory that was to be used as well as the IO Controllers that was used in conjunction with the Motherboard. Only one option was available, the Intel 850 Chipset. Intel and its solutions were starting to look like Stalin and a Communist Totalitarian State. It was a dull solution so as to speak. And at an alarming rate Intel’s market share was being taken away by Advanced Micro Devices whose solution the AMD Athlon Processor offered a more competitive solution. It seemed like Intel was loosing the game without much of a battle.

Then Intel in an aggressive move introduced the Intel 845 Chipset which offered a more competitive and cheap platform for the Intel Pentium 4. But the limited memory bandwidth and lackluster performance as a result of that only made it attractive to budget conscious consumers who did not place a lot of importance on performance.

And yet there were only two platforms available for the Intel Pentium 4 and both by Intel themselves. Things weren’t looking good for Intel.

But slowly but steadily Other Motherboard Chipset Makers in Taiwan started getting into the act. With alternate solutions coming in things are looking better for Intel’s flag ship processor the Pentium 4. The first chipset that was introduced the P4x266 By VIA was a very good option indeed. It incorporated Much Cheaper DDR SD Ram which made that option a much more attractive one for consumers who were opting for an Intel processor based solution. But there was a problem, Intel refused to recognize VIA’s platform for the P4 Claming that it was not authorized by Intel. Thus there is a looming legal battle over the the P4x266 Chipset which makes its future unclear though there are already solutions based upon it available in the Market.

But a lot of people seems to have forgotten the The other Motherboard Chipset Maker in Taiwan, SiS also known as Silicon Integrated Systems. Now SiS though famous for its very competitively priced solutions for the graphic industry and for Motherboards was never a name synonymous with Performance. That was all to change as the SiS 735 chipset introduced to support the AMD Athlon Processor broke all expectations by shattering performance records held by then the #1 Performance platform for the Athlon the AMD 760/761. SiS was coming of age basically and was slowly asserting themselves as one of the big boys in the highly competitive semiconductor manufacturing industry.

The board that we are reviewing today the P4s Dragon Ultra By Soyo is based on the latest offing by SiS the SiS 645/961 Chipset. Our Expectations from this board were very high sine Soyo has certainly come to the forefront of motherboard manufacturers with their later solutions like the SY K7V Dragon plus producing industry standard scores for performance as well as over all value for money. We expected that Soyo and SiS both striving to become the best in their business to be a deadly combination. But lets not be too presumptuous. Read on and you will find out what this combination really has in store for you.