SOYO-KT400 DRAGON Ultra Motherboard (Platinum Edition)

By going through the above tests, we can clearly see that the KT400 chipset doesn’t really offer any significant performance increase as we would have expected it to. One of the main reasons for this subdued performance is due to the 133MHz FSB of the current Athlon XP processors. Things will definitely change if you get hold of one of the new 2800+ or 2700+ Athlon XP processors which comes with a 166MHz FSB.

Another thing we found out was that, the SY Dragon Ultra KT400 performs better with 333DDR memory and gives around 5-10% performance increase in all the benchmark tests. This is good news for all those intending to purchase one of these boards, since for the moment it’s better to hang onto your PC2700 Memory than upgrading.

So where does the SOYO Dragon Ultra KT400 stand? Well, what we must consider is that this board incorporates all the features of the KT400 chipset. This means, users are offered AGP 8x support, ATA133 support, USB 2.0, 5.1 channel audio, 400MHz DDR speeds, and 8x V-Link increasing the communication speed between the Northbridge and the Southbridge to 533MB/s as apposed to 266MB/s. While these improvements currently don’t show much performance benefits, things will change for the better sooner than we would expect.

For overclockers, this board offers a wide range of features which they can make use of. CPU Ratio changes, FSB increments in 1MHz stepping, VCore, AGP and Memory voltage adjustments and the CPU to PCI bridge divider pretty much wraps up what a hardcore overclocker would look for in good overclocking board. We did manage to get the board as high as 175MHz giving the CPU a speed of 1840 (175*10.5). The CPU Die was showing a temperature of 60C at this point, and after loosing one good CPU I wasn’t going to take any more chances. So our overclocking stopped from this point, however it’s nice to see SOYO has worked on their overclocking issues which were prevalent if their former boards. I plan on testing the limits of the board later on by putting it into our Prometeia system. The updates will be duly posted.

Furthermore the board comes with a great number of accessories giving great value for your money. SOYO offers a range of E-box options, so depending on your requirement you could order one to meet your needs. The onboard LAN feature and the digital audio expansion card are great features to have and are unique to a selected few manufactures.

If you currently own a decent KT333 board then we wouldn’t recommend you upgrading to a KT400 system just yet. However you must weigh the pros and cons here. Upgrading to this board will enable you to take advantage of the KT400 chipset features. While these currently don’t play a significant role, we can expect to see new developments soon enough to change the tables around. Therefore if you want to plan ahead by all means go for it. Overall the SY Dragon Ultra KT400 offers very good performance and combines a lovely blend of accessories. Currently the board can be purchased for around US$165, which you can expect to drop in the coming months.