Good price / features compromise
Written: Jul 11 '03 (Updated Jul 13 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: (Relatively) low price, features, ease of installation.
Cons: BIOS update required; hard to migrate to RAID array; requires AGP Pro video card.
The Bottom Line: Get this board if you want a fast, reliable mobo with RAID 0+1.
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| windsurfer's Full Review: Soyo SY-KT400 DRAGON Ultra Motherboard |
I did a lot of research on sites like Tom's Hardware for a good Athlon motherboard with RAID 0+1 capability and other built-ins like LAN. This board came the closest at a reasonable price.
If you're looking for RAID, you have to be careful because many boards only offer 0 or 1, not 0+1 and many new boards only offer it on the Serial ATA interface. RAID 0+1 offers both faster speed and high reliability with today's cheap ATA drives ($200 total for an 80 GB array composed of four 40GB drives).
The installation was easy and the board worked with off-the-shelf PC2700 DDR from PNY and Geil with Win 2000 Pro. I had to update the BIOS to recognize the Barton processor and there were updated drivers for everything on Soyo's website. All of the updated drivers downloaded quickly and installed without a hitch, though, which is more than I can say for some other motherboards I have.
The only problem I had with installation is that I am trying to upgrade from another system and it doesn't work to simply copy your existing drive to the RAID array: the drive letters are different (the RAID array does not become C:), so Win 2000 boots, but fails to completely start because it's looking for the C: drive.
The system was not stable in "Fast" mode setting in the BIOS, but works fine in "Normal".
Note also that this board requires a 1.5 v AGP Pro video card. I was not able to determine from their boxes if video cards on the shelf at the store meet this requirement, so for the moment I'm using an old PCI video card. There's also very little documentation on the mfrs' websites as to which AGP cards are 1.5v Pro and which are older 3.5v.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 92
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Epinions.com ID:
windsurfer
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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