By Tikkler - November 18, 2000

Infobox

Product Reviewed: SY-K7VTA Product Page Manufacturer: SOYO Computer Inc. Home Page Suggested Retail Price: Unspecified

Just a week after I originally conducted my first review of the SOYO SY-K7VTA socket A motherboard, I was informed by SOYO that they were now taking that motherboard into full production. A few days after that, a production version of the SY-K7VTA was waiting for me at my front door and so, here's the update review on the SY-K7VTA. If you haven't already read my original review of the SY-K7VTA, please do so as I will continually refer to it throughout this entire review. If you have already read my benchmark-less original review, you'll be happy to find some benchmarks comparing the pre-production and production versions of the SY-K7VTA in this update review.

The Voice-less Doctor
In my original review of the SY-K7VTA, I forgot to include anything regarding SOYO's Voice Doctor feature, which was already implemented into that pre-production board that I received. The Voice Doctor is basically a feature built-into the SY-K7VTA motherboard that will notify you about what is wrong if your computer fails to boot up. Sure, this diagnostic feature has been around since the beginning of the Pentium, or maybe even the 486, but SOYO's Voice Doctor will literally tell you, in either English or Chinese through a jumper on the motherboard, what's wrong through your PC speaker.

We tested this feature out on both the pre-production and production versions of the SY-K7VTA by simply removing all memory modules from the motherboard, and, sure enough, a female voice, although a little bit quiet, informed us that "the memory module might be damaged or not installed." Nice.

First Impressions
Most of the packaging has remained the same when compared to the pre-production package. Included is the same SOYO 3-in-1 Bonus pack that I praised so much in my original review, the same quick-start guide, the IDE and floppy cables and the driver CD. Still missing is the optional USB connector to plug into the motherboard to utilize the 2 extra USB ports supported by the VIA KT133 chipset for a total of 4 ports but what's rather strange is that SOYO included a pack of thermal grease this time round for applying onto the CPU.

On to: Board Layout