Conclusion
The SOYO P4X400 DRAGON ULTRA Platinum Edition, to give its full title, is something of a strange motherboard. It's presented in immaculate fashion right from the outset. The packaging is superb. The wealth of useful extras such as the add-on audio card and Sigma box are great. The colour coordination, for those of you who like aesthetics, is excellent, too. The SOYO gains further marks by equipping the DRAGON with excellent on-board audio, decent on-board RAID, 6 usable USB2.0 ports, and working 8x AGP support. The BIOS is extremely flexible and should cater for all.
However, today's very latest motherboards do seem to go that little bit further in specification terms. We've now seen the widespread introduction of Firewire (1394a) support on high-end XP and P4 motherboards, whether it be by integration from a Southbridge or from an additional IC. Further, the very latest motherboards that consider themselves to be feature laden now come with some form of Serial ATA support, usually in the form 2 Marvell-powered SATA chips and connectors.
SOYO offer DDR400 support for the DRAGON, albeit in an unofficial manner. That's just as well as the performance exhibited by the motherboard with DDR400 implemented was nothing short of poor. Usable bandwidth (at DDR400) was around 30 - 40% lower than with well-tuned DDR333. For all intents and purposes DDR400 support was highly suspect. Performance with the DDR333 memory option was good if not great. Although the DRAGON did well in a couple of benchmarks, it consistently fell behind the SiS648 comparison motherboard in all the rest, especially gaming. Considering the encouraging signs from the initial SiSoft SANDRA and Pifast results, this came as something of a surprise. Still, and perhaps most importantly, it was extremely stable throughout.
Considered in isolation, the SOYO P4X400 DRAGON is a good motherboard, but when considered with respect to the other Pentium 4 chipsets currently on offer, it is decidedly average. The price is associated with such a comprehensive package will deter most people off, too. Priced at around the £180 mark, I can think of several other motherboards that I'd personally favour over this particular one.
Highs
-
Beautifully presented throughout
-
Excellent BIOS
-
Extremely stable throughout testing
-
Decent features
Lows
-
DDR400 performance is non-existent
-
Price, £180 is extremely steep for any motherboard
-
Performance is middling at best
-
Other motherboards do a similar or better job (in performance terms) at a far lower cost
-
Low overclocking potential
Overall rating 7/10
