Soyo SY-K7AIA AMD 750 ATX Slot-A

AnandTech Motherboard Rating

Performance

Following the reference design closely, the K7AIA performs virtually identically to other AMD 750 based motherboards.

The board gets an average grade in performance because it performs on-par with other boards in its class while not distancing itself from the rest of the pack with superior performance.

Price

Failing to use the VIA 686A South Bridge instead of the AMD 756 helps to drive the cost of the K7AIA ever so slightly, but noticeably.

Even manufacturers that made AMD 750 based designs such as ASUS with the K7M chose to use the 686A instead of the AMD 756 South Bridge. The 686A is a highly integrated solution that allows for components like the I/O controller and hardware monitor to be pulled off of the motherboard thus saving in PCB space and reducing costs.

Stability

One of the biggest benefits of following the AMD Fester reference design so closely is that the stability of the K7AIA was very respectable.

Quality

Soyo has always made decent component selection for use on their motherboards, and combined with the stability of the K7AIA we have a board that is just slightly above average in terms of quality.

A rating of 5.5 here is normal for most motherboards.

Features

The K7AIA is a very bland board in terms of features. There are no overclocking features to boast about and no manual voltage configuration settings.

A majority of the lack of features comes from the AMD 750 chipset which does not support PC133 SDRAM which, ever since its introduction to the Athlon platform with the KX133, has become a demanded feature due to the noticeable performance gains resulting from the added memory bandwidth of PC133 SDRAM.

Layout

The K7AIA followed the Fester reference design a bit too closely for it to get an above average layout rating.

The positioning of the ATX power connector can be very limiting to those users with money already invested in one of the larger heatsink/fan combos.

Retail Availability

While Soyo isn't the most widely known manufacturer in the retail market, their boards are generally available from the larger online vendors with diverse product lines.

Documentation & Software Bundle

As with most motherboard manufacturers these days, the K7AIA User's Manual is nothing more than a Quick Start Guide and documentation on CD.

Fortunately for Soyo, the software bundle includes Norton AV, Ghost and VirtualDrive which can come in handy and help pull the board to an above average rating in this category.