By  John Bogush   11/10/99

Here We Go Kiddies...

  Once again SOYO has delivered a product that in my opinion has been aimed directly at the overclocking market and has definitely delivered another blow to ABIT's reign.  The SY-6BA+IV is the refined cousin to the earlier introduced SY-6BA+III that so many in the overclocking community have already fallen in love with.  The 6BA+III has created a good reputation with it's excellent "Soft Menu" type AWARD BIOS and overall stability but the 6BA+IV delivers that and a little more.

A Little Extra Real-Estate...

  One of the first things you will notice when pulling the 6BA+IV from it's box is that it is physically larger then the 6BA+III.  That extra space is needed though because of 2 extra IDE connectors and the HighPoint ATA66 controller chipset that is new in the 6BA series of SOYO's motherboards.  Thats right folks a total of 4 IDE connectors for a possible maximum total of 8 IDE devices.  Heck, that alone is a good reason for some folks to consider this board.

Installation...

  The 6BA+IV installation into the case is typical of all standard mobos with no problems encountered.  Once all the components were installed onto the mobo including a Viper 770 video card, SB Live sound card, and a Quantum KX ATA66 hard drive, it was time to start with the BIOS and driver installation.  I had been hearing a few comments recently about problems getting the HighPoint ATA66 controller working correctly so the first thing I did was to download the most recent 6BA+IV BIOS revision and HighPoint drivers before I had even opened the 6BA+IV's box.  The BIOS was updated first using a floppy containing the new BIOS file and AWARD flashing utility and that operation went smoothly as expected.  The Quantum KX hard drive already had a recent installation of Windows98 SE so it was connected to the IDE 3 ATA66 connector on the 6BA+IV and I then rebooted the machine.  The next step was to set in the BIOS to boot from the SCSI device (required to boot from the ATA66 drive) and sure enough I was soon greeted with the familiar Windows98 splash screen.  The HighPoint drivers were then updated and all was well with absolutely no problems noted during the installation procedure I used.

So How Does It Handle...

  I found absolutely no unpleasant surprises with the 6BA+IV.   Compatibility with all the applications and benchmark utilities that are in my normal regime for new hardware presented no lock-ups or any other sign of system instability.  Hardware monitoring is fully implemented with the WinBond W83782D chip including the internal temperature diode found in the Intel line of Celeron, PII, and PIII processors.  The HighPoint ATA66 controller and the Quantum KX ATA66 hard drive achieved 57MB per second burst read speeds but as we all know by now the real world performance advantages of present ATA66 technology is barely if at all noticeable.   With 27 different available FSB settings and an adjustable Vcore voltage up to 10% above default the 6BA+IV mirrors the older 6BA+III in the overclocking and tweaking department.  Keep in mind folks that with many of the "slotket" adapter cards around today for Celeron PPGA processors voltage options to as much as 3.0 volts may be possible using jumpers on the "slotket" itself.

Final Thoughts...

  SOYO has hit another ball out of the park with the 6BA+IV.  With the now well proven and reliable BX chipset and the HighPoint ATA66 controller the 6BA+IV is a finally honed thoroughbred with few rivals opposing it's lead.  It is a very easy board to setup and the jumperless design makes fine tuning the BIOS a pleasure.   Though the HighPoint ATA66 controller may present a few extra decisions during setup it is simple and pretty much self-explanatory presenting no insurmountable challenges.  My only criticism is the lack of room between the slot1 connector and the DIMM slots, using one of the larger heatsinks such as the ALPHA P125S or GlobalWIN FDP-32 will block the first two rows for the memory.  I tried various combinations of memory sticks in the third and fourth DIMM slots and had no difficulties though SOYO does advise filling them beginning with DIMM 1.  If you are in the market for a stable and high performance overclocking friendly motherboard then I with no reservations what so ever highly recommend the SOYO SY-6BA+IV.

  Check out these other fine reviews of the SY-6BA+IV...

  Hot Hardware

  Overclockers.com

  Hard OCP