SOYO-KT600 DRAGON Ultra Motherboard (Platinum Edition)
Overclocking:
In terms of overcloking, SOYO certainly seems to have implemented a number of improvements to this board. Firstly, the board has been fitted with a DIP switch enabling users to change the Multiplier setting of unlocked CPU’s. CPU, DIMM and AGP voltage can be adjusted through the BIOS as well. For increased stability a CPU to PCI divider has also been placed creating a stable environment for PCI devices under overclocked conditions. The divider supports 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5.
As far as stability of the board goes, the KT600 Ultra seems to stand a lot better than the former Dragon boards. The BIOS of the KT600 does not support minus values for its CPU temperature, and as a result we could not test the board on our Prometeia System. Nevertheless with water cooling we were able to reach 220MHz with no problems at all. We couldn’t go beyond this point since our CPU doesn’t seem to like it :. We’ll be receiving a device which allows users to adjust the Multiplier of the CPU on the fly, so once we receive this product, we’ll make sure to conduct our tests further.
Conclusion
The SOYO KT600 Dragon Ultra certainly has lived up to its expectations. For the moment however it doesn’t look like the KT600 chipset will be able to surpass the performance offered by nForce 2 Ultra 400 boards. As the benchmarks show however, the performance increase noticed between the nForce2 Ultra 400 board and the SY KT600 is quite marginal, and when it comes to real world performance users are very unlikely to notice any difference between the two.
In the next couple of months to come, we may see revised BIOS releases for the KT600, which may offer faster performance and ultimately give us a clear distinction as to which is the faster platform. But for now nForce 2 ultra 400 boards have the slight edge.
This however does not mean nForce2 boards are still the winner in the market. What the SY KT600 lacks in performance has been fully complimented by its extra features. So far, only a very limited number of the nForce 2 boards offer this level of functionality. The south bridge of the KT600 chipset is one of the most advanced in today’s market. By default south bridge has native support for Serial ATA and RAID. The integrated dual channel SATA/RAID controller supplies 150MB/s bandwidth per port and also supports RAID 0, 1 and 0+1. in addition to this, the south bridge also supports up to four parallel ATA-133 devices. In total the SY KT600 supports up to 8 hard drives.
Furthermore, the board supports up to 8 USB 2.0 ports giving great flexibility to users. In addition to these native features, the SY 600 Ultra also has a built in Gigabit Ethernet controller, an IEEE 1394 Firewire controller providing 2 firewire ports, and a SILICON IMAGE SATA controller. These are features that you wouldn’t find in your average motherboard. Incorporating most of the high-end features a user would look for, SOYO has certainly made the KT600 Dragon Ultra a truly unique board. At US$186 this board falls into the category of other high end solutions, nevertheless, it’s absolutely great value for money when comparing what you get for the price. The SY KT600 Dragon ultra also showed decent overclocking potential and has been integrated with an array of features to better support this.
Overall we would truly recommend this board to anyone looking for a high-end feature rich board with above average performance. The reason I say above average is that, nForce2 Ultra 400 boards still do have the edge in terms of performance, at a slightly higher price however. SOYO also offers a scaled down version of the KT600 Dragon Ultra for budget conscious buyers, so there’s something for everyone.
