Intel 440BX 133MHz Motherboard Roundup (June 2000)

Soyo SY-6BA+IV - Click Here for the AnandTech Review

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The Soyo 6BA+IV closely resembles the ABIT BE6-II in that it features 5 PCI slots, and an on-board HighPoint Ultra DMA 66 controller (HPT366). 

The HPT366 and the first four PCI slots are bus master capable, thus leaving the fifth PCI slot as a slave slot.

Unfortunately, the number of devices that can operate in a slave slot are limited and include some PCI graphics accelerators, a Voodoo2, and some Ethernet adapters.  So for most purposes, the 6BA+IV is really only a 4 PCI slot motherboard. 

IRQ sharing on the 6BA+IV is like the rest of the boards reviewed here.  The AGP slot can share an IRQ with either the first or the second PCI slots, the third and sixth PCI slots share an IRQ as do the fourth and fifth which also share an IRQ with the on-board USB controller.  The on-board HighPoint controller shares an IRQ with the second slot. 

The SY-6BA+IV features the "Soyo Combo Setup" where most important settings are found. Control over FSB, CPU ratio, AGP ratio, core voltage, and hardware monitoring all found in this section. Notably, Soyo has added an option for cache latency control to keep up with ABIT's plethora of tweaking options. The default is reported, but any setting from 1 to 15 can be selected. FSB settings of 66 / 75 / 81 / 83 / 90 / 95 / 100 / 105 / 110 / 112 / 113 / 115 / 117 / 118 / 120 / 122 / 124 / 126 / 133 / 135 / 137 / 138 / 140 / 142 / 144 / 150 / 155MHz are all available.

To help with every last bit of overclocking, core voltage can be increased by 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10%