Soyo Dragon Plus rules!

[novon]

If you want a KT266A board, this is the one to get

 

[Aenygma]

I have it. But, I have a question too... Why even when the PC is off, does the board get a lil bit of power. (The green LED is always on, and the Lan light is always on too.)

 

[Imyourzero]

Yes, this board certainly does rule. There are so many KT266a board available but IMO this board's feature list, speed, and stability put it up there at the top of the list. That's not to say that other manufacturers (Asus, Soltek, EPoX, etc.) don't have great KT266a boards as well, though. But if you want a feature-packed board with awesome speed and stability that also happens to look very cool, ya gotta go Soyo.

This is my first Soyo board but if this mobo is an indication of their quality then it probably won't be my last.

 

[crackerjack]

Hi imyourzero,

I agree with you that this Soyo board is an impressive board. Especially is you see all it's features.
However, I am one of those (many) out there who is having some trouble to get it to work smoothly. It's quite slow and seems to take long pauses when just working within W2K or winXP, even with no stress and barely any programs running at all. And DirectX 3D games (Max Payne, Colin McRae) tend to make it reboot after a while (anywhere between a few minutes to 20 minutes or so).
As my configuration is not much different from yours I was wondering whether you had done something to get it stable. Or was it stable whe you got it?
Could you tell me which driver & bios versions you are currently using? And which OS you are running?
Detonator, VIA, Soyo, Audigy etc.
Did you apply any patches like the PCI latency patch?
Are your IRQ's being shared?
And in which PCI slot have you placed the Audigy?
Any unusual settings in Bios (OC, memory timings etc)

Quite a few questions, but I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to answer them as they might help me on.

Thanks
Jack

-------
Athlon XP 1800+
Soyo Dragon+ w/latest bios (at work here, so can't check the version id)
512 MB Corsair PC2400 DDR (2x256) in slot 1 & 2
Creative Geforce3 ti500
Audigy player in PCI port 2
Onboard Lan active
W2K (at the moment, but can change)
Nothing over- or underclocked
Detonator 23.11 (tried the 21.85's as well)
VIA 4-in-1 4.37 (only used the AGP driver in winXP)

 

[455olds]

Yes it's a good board,, 2ba1 bois required, 2ba2(?) bois for three ram sticks, must have quality ram and PS. keep PCI cards to a min and in slots 4,5. Clean install a must for long term stabilty. If only it had VDRAMM option and devider for the PCI freq., then average OC fsb's would be in the 150+ insted of the mid 140's.. For me it was a groung up build and I didn't want to buy a soundcard and nic. Money better spent on PS and cpu HS.

 

[DoubleL]

Well I hope it is a good board I just got one to replace a 8KHA+ that died so I will see if it is up with Asus

 

[Imyourzero]

<< Hi imyourzero,

I agree with you that this Soyo board is an impressive board. Especially is you see all it's features.
However, I am one of those (many) out there who is having some trouble to get it to work smoothly. It's quite slow and seems to take long pauses when just working within W2K or winXP, even with no stress and barely any programs running at all. And DirectX 3D games (Max Payne, Colin McRae) tend to make it reboot after a while (anywhere between a few minutes to 20 minutes or so). As my configuration is not much different from yours I was wondering whether you had done something to get it stable. Or was it stable whe you got it? >>



First I was dual-booting with WinME and Win2k. With WinME, the board was stable and with Win2k it was stable after I installed all of the fixes and files for Win2k.



<< Could you tell me which driver & bios versions you are currently using? And which OS you are running? >>



I am using BIOS revision 2ba2, the newest one currently on Soyo's site. I'm running WinXP bare-bones...that is, no 4-in-1's or any additional files besides everything that was on the Windows Update site.



<< Detonator, VIA, Soyo, Audigy etc. >>



Currently running 23.11 Detonators, but also ran 21.85 and 21.83 in the past. Not running any 4-in-1's, but I did use version 4.37 for Win2k and WinME when I was dual booting. I also used the 3.12 Beta IDE Busmaster drivers in Win2k because they greatly increased my IDE performance overall.



<< Did you apply any patches like the PCI latency patch? >>



No PCI latency patch, but I did install several patches. I installed the Microsoft Windows 2000 Patch for AGP applications on AMD's site, plus the Win2k ATA/100 Hotfix from www.viahardware.com as well as both Service Packs 1 & 2 for Win2k from Microsoft.



<< Are your IRQ's being shared? >>



Yes. The only one that's shared right now is #11, and sharing that IRQ are: SB Audigy/GF3 Ti500/VIA Ethernet Adapter.
Remember, I'm running WinXP so this is normal (as it is with Win2k). But, I have several IRQ's free and if I had my preference
I'd like to have the video and sound on different IRQ's just for peace of mind. I've had no problems that I know of, though.



<< And in which PCI slot have you placed the Audigy? >>



Right now it's in PCI slot 5. I have no idea whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it seems to work fine and my rig isn't unstable.



<< Any unusual settings in Bios (OC, memory timings etc) >>



Nope. I do have the "Optimized Defaults" loaded, so my bus is of course 133 (266 DDR) and my memory is at CAS2.



<< Quite a few questions, but I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to answer them as they might help me on.

Thanks
Jack >>



No problem! I'd love for you to get your board up and running smoothly. I'm so happy with the way mine runs!! It's feature-packed, fast as heck, and stable as a rock.

Have you eliminated heat as a possible cause for your reboots? What about your power supply?

Also, you say you reboot when playing Direct3D games. What about OpenGL games? Does it just happen with Direct3D games or ALL games, period?

 

[kursplat]

he he he... jeez wyst , no wonder you've got so many post. you've got the same questions going in 3 threads just on the first page.
fingers are tired just thinkin' about it