Here is Soyo’s official feature list, stolen straight from their US site.
Processor
-Pentium 4s - all speeds Chipset Type
-Intel i875P Chipset Description
-Intel i875P (Canterwood ) / ICH5R chipset
-Supports 800 and 533 MHz FSB Form Factor
-ATX Memory Type
-Dual DDR400/333 Memory Description
-Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets
-Support DUAL channel DDR 400/333 up to 4GB (ECC memory) Expansion Slots
-Five 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (V2.2 compliant)
-One AGP slot (support 4x/8x mode with 1.5v) IDE Description
-Serial ATA
--Four channels Serial ATA ports
--ICH5R integrates Serial ATA RAID 0 (2 channels)
--Silicon Image Sil3112A Serial ATA RAID (0,1,0+1) (2 channels)
-UltraDMA
--Four independent channels for eight IDE devices(two for IDE-RAID)
--Supports up to PIO Mode 5 and UDMA 66/100/133
--Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports IEEE1394 Description
-Three IEEE 1394 Firewire ports Audio Description -On board CMI 8738 audio chip providing 6-channel audio
-Supports optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs IO Port Description
-Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible)
-One parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
-One FDD port (Supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD
-On-board IrDA/FIR ports with optional cable for transceiver
-8 * USB 2.0 ports (4*rear, 4*pin header)
-3 * IEEE1394 ports (1* port, 2*pin header) IO Connection Description
-PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports
-Two USB ports
-One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port
-Two D-Sub 9-pin male serial ports
-Two USB ports
-0ne RJ45 connector
-Audio I/O: LINE-Outx1 , LINE-Inx1, MIC JACK x1 BIOS Description
-Award PCI BIOS with ACPI function
-Supports multiple-boot from E-IE/SCSI/CD-ROM/FDD LS120/ZIP
-2 Mb Flash ROM Health Monitoring Description
-On-board voltage monitors for +3.3V, +12V, VCORE, DIMM, AGP
-CPU fan speed monitor
-CPU temperature monitoring through flexible thermal sensor Dimension Description
-Four layers, 30.5 cm x 24.5 cm (12” x 9.05”)
-ATX form factor
The version we have here is the ‘black edition’ but you will probably want to get the Platinum edition instead, as it looks better, has a few extras and is actually available :-p in any case, the layout of the two models is precisely the same.
In general, the layout is extremely good, there’s nothing in a hopelessly silly place. Whoever designed the layout obviously had a think first, something the designers at some other manufactures are guilty of not doing.
The first thing I was happy to see what a heatsink of truly epic proportions on the Northbridge. Far better to have something like this than a miniscule heatsink with a loud 6500rpm fan on it (are you listening Abit?), and should you feel the desire to add some active cooling, is a much better starting point in any case.
Soyo obviously listen to the few criticisms we had about their last Dragon board and have added an AGP retention mechanism. It’s the slide method we first saw on Albatron boards and will keep your AGP card where it should be during transit – much needed if you have something like the kilogram-weighing FX5800 in your machine :o)
The floppy connector is placed high on the board, where it should be to be compatible with those annoying full-tower cases with the floppy drive right at the top. The truly silly number of ATA ports are also smartly placed at the bottom of the board. In total you have four SATA ports (two of which are RAID enabled should you wish to protect your data) and four normal ATA ports, two of which are again RAID. If I’ve done my sums correctly, you could in theory connect a total of twelve hard drives to the Soyo without an extra PCI card.
On the rear panel of the board there are a total of four USB 2.0 ports, a single firewire , a 10-100 network (gigabit LAN on the platinum version) connection and a full collection of legacy serial and parallel ports. The Soyo’s back panel lacks the normal sharp metal protrusions (which I assume are there for grounding purposes) around the mouse and keyboard PS2 ports, something my long-suffering fingers certainly appreciate.
The Soyo Dragon 2’s Integrated sound is excellent, as before provided by the CMI 8738 chipset. In my opinion, if you buy an Asus/Abit/Gigabyte etc board – factor in the extra cash for a sound card because the integrated solution will be a poor match for even average speakers. This soundcard however offers better than SoundBlaster Live quality – more than enough for even picky audio Nazis. It supports 5.1 surround sound speakers, DLS wave table music and a professional class SPDIF IN/OUT digital interface. Completing the feature set is a pair of optical inputs/outputs for use with minidisc players. Gamers are well catered for with both Direct Sound 3D & A3D support, but no EAX unfortunately. All of this connectivity of course needs an extra backing plate which is supplied with the board.
An acronym for "Redundant Array of Independent Drives", RAID is a method of using multiple hard drives to either increase performance or reliability of a given system. The Highpoint ATA chip on the Soyo is based on the HighPoint 372 Lite Controller, and supports ATA133 disks in either RAID 0 (Striping) or RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0+1 (mirroring+striping). Disk striping provides a dramatic increase in drive speed (Around 95% better performance under sustained data transfers), whilst also utilising all the available space on the hard drives (assuming they are the same size). Mismatched hard disks can be used, although the maximum capacity is defined as the space on the smallest drive in the array multiplied by the number of drives. Mirroring offers a little improvement in drive performance thanks to load balancing, and copies an exact image of the data from one drive onto the other, thus if your main drive should fail, you have a perfect back up until the sick disk in the array is replaced. The SATA RAID solution is provided by the silicon images Sil3112A controller and allows RAID 0 and 1 modes.
I was able to successfully transplant the RAID array from my KT400 dragon onto the Dragon 2 without issue, only a quick windows reinstall was needed to teach Windows XP that I had changed chipset and allow it to boot.
The Dragon 2 features an improved version of the “sigma box” found in previous Dragons. It features two USB 2.0 ports, two firewire ports (one full size, one mini), and of course the Compact Flash / Microdrive / Smartmedia reader. Support for Panasonic Secure digital and Sony memory sticks has also been added, which means whatever camera you have, the Soyo can read its media. One of the best ideas I have seen for a long time also makes its way onto the Bayone in the form of an external clear CMOS button (recessed so you don’t accidentally bugger anything up). If you get a little over zealous with the overclocking options, there is thankfully no need to get onto your hands and knees and go delving into the bowels of your PC case.
The main selling point of the 875 chipset is its dual channel DDR interface. Where as conventional chipsets have just a single 64-bit DDR SDRAM memory controller, the i875 (as well as nVIDIA’s nforce 2 chipsets) features two independent 64-bit SDR/DDR SDRAM memory controllers. This means that providing you use two compatible (preferably identical) sticks of DDR, you can gain 128bits of bandwidth. With its super fast quad-pumped FSB pipeline, the Pentiums can really make use of all that extra bandwidth, a far cry from the near-pointless dual channel memory on the nForce/AMD solution.
