Soyo P4S DRAGON Ultra?

I was looking into building a new system with the Northwood chips later this year(Once they come down in price a little). I was wondering if this mobo will be compatible with the Northwood chip, as it is a S478 mobo. I read in some places though that Northwood chips will have a higher FSB and I'll have to overclock just to get the specs to normal? Any info about the new chip or the features I can expect with this mobo would be appreciated.

Bump...

tt

Soyo P4S Dragon w/P4 2.00a Northwood

FIRST, let me say that I'm hoping to gather advice and tips, and to share any overclocking experiences (good or bad).

OK... I'm new to overclocking. Been building my own systems since 1987, but I always heeded warnings & hard luck stories of overclocking, until now (Fen 9 2001). Since I'm "green" to overclocking, I'll probably provide too much detail at first, but here it comes...

Here's the details: I (along with two other friends) recently decided to upgrade, and picked up new Soyo Dragon Ultra P4S (P4SX to be exact) motherboards & Intel P4 2.00a Northwood's (retail NOT). This motherboard has what seems to be an overwhelming abount of BIOS options (rev 2AA3) related to performance tweaking and overclocking.

I've not had much luck. I've tried probably 6 or 7 different combinations since yesterday. Some seem to work, but the system will not warm restart. Some just lock me up all together. I have not upped voltage levels on anything, since I have only a standard "Volcano" air-cooled CPU fan & heatsink with the standard issue thermal ooze between CPU & sink.

Other [INTERNAL ONLY] details on the system -

MOTHERBOARD: Soyo P4Sx Dragon Ultra Socket 478 P4 M/b. S/n is either C201-014663 or 7011226-2. MotherBoard "NID" (I'm thinking this smells like an ethernet/MAC address) is 00502C02E4D7.

CPU: Markings on Intel Northwood chip "2A GHZ/512/400/1.5v SL5YR MALAY L146A753-0169 INTEL (m) (c) '01".

POWER SUPPLY: Enermax "Whisper Power" EG465P-VE

DISKS: Two Maxtor (oem pkg) model "D740X" 7200rpm UltraDMA133 40GB drives using Soyo's on-board HighPoint HPT372 UltraDMA133 RAID (stripeset (RAID 0) option). Disks are also marked by Maxtor as follows: "MX6L04L02 rev A00 FRU: 19K1568 Maxtor GTLA VQ40Y011-01-B P/n 253454-001"

VIDEO CARD: ATI Radeon 8500DV All-In-Wonder 64mb AGP 64Mb DDR. There's a lot more (chip-type) detail on the video card. I've got it all written down since build. I'll provide more of it if asked.

SOUND: Soyo's on-board CMI 8738 6-channel audio w/coax and optical I/O panel. I'm using a speaker setup from Altec-Lansing w/Powered Sub-Woofer.

MEMORY: Two 512Mb PC2700 184-pin DDR333 modules. These are oem from Fry's Electronics, so only other details I can give are off the module itself. They're built on a purple 184-pin printed circuit board with 8 chips on each side, each chip marked as follows: "NANYA 0136 NT5DS32M8AT-7K 179Y08KT Singapore"

CD BURNER: TDK "Burn-Proof" P/n: AI-321040K Mfg: Jan 2002 ROM Ver DF41

DVD-ROM: Sony DDU1621 Mfg: Nov/19 2001

ANYTHING ELSE is on-board (or external and not connected unless absolutely necessary). Or I just forgot to write it down (sorry, I'm crisp at the moment). Paralell port is set to ancient mode and is NOT consuming a DMA I/O channel.

In closing: I don't much care about the "frills" and extras that I have added to this. I'll crank them up & close the case when we're all done. In the meantime I'm willing to chop it down to the bare minimum, make a mess, and test if someone has REASONABLE ideas (and my wife keeps permitting the mess).

Please reply if you have info on the P4 2.00a / Soyo P4Sx combo!

SlyDog

I actually got 2 of these boards for myself and my spouse. Its probably the best Intel motherboard on the market in terms of both stability and reliability. A few pointers to start and then u guys can lay on the questions from here on out:

1. Is Northwood compatible
2. Works best with Kingmax BGA PC2700 memory which is true PC2700, everything else, except possibly Samsung which is a good 2nd choice, all other memory IMO is a waste of this mobo's capabilites especially if your OCing.
3. Ati products dont help with OCing IMO, Nvidia cards are much better at being tolerant of this.
4. You should be able to get a P4 2.0A to OC to at least 2.6 on this mobo without a sweat, and this is using a standard HSF.

the soyo motherboard ultra

That is very flattering to hear that some of you is not having any problems with this mobo.
(Pardon mi ingles) her in Scandinavia it is not true that it supports Northwood p4. in fact is Soyo making a new bios for this problem, because it is a problem. it doesn’t show the temp in the bios or in windows, and the bios freezes, times to times.
The overclockability of the board is in fact very god but if you are not able to see the temp it isn’t very safe to apply it.
I hope that you understand what I’m riding to you.
ps: the fsb I use is for the cpu 18*130 and for the ram is 2*170,
But sins I do not have a temp reader I do not feel safe.
Sorry!

I too built a sys last weekend with P4s Dragon Ultra,1.6a cpu/ stock HSF and (2) 256meg OCZ PC3000.
Held off on ocing till last nite due to wanting to learn bios better before hitting the gas. Yesterday Installed temp monitor and got spooked at cpu temp of 72c-74c and 30c on mb with MBM5 and found one at http://www.soyo.com.tw/ .
Gave me same reading... I freaked pulled the heatsink off cleaned er up applied some Arctic Silver thermal compound and got same temps. In bios i allways see 42-43c (which seems warm to me..?) 30c on mb and I have it set to shut down in bios at cpu temp 60c. With that and feeling the hs. I dont beleive my temps are correct.
So I hit the gas a bit. Had been running cpu/mem 100mhz/133mhz 3/4. set er up to 133mhz/133mhz 1/1 restarted checked temp in bios@ 43-43c. Started winxp. Soyo mon read 72-74c cpu@21**. Ran 3dmark 2001 no prob, scored around 74**.
and then put sys back to idle I get a good handle on this.


U guys run into and temp probs? Whats ur temps?


P4 northwood 1.6a
Soyo P4s Dragon ultra (Bios rev 2AA3)
(2) 256meg OCZ PC3000
G3 Asus V8200 DLX
52X CD rom
24x10x40 burner
On Board Audio hooked to Dolby Digital Stereo Receiver
Alluminum case with 4 Case fans
Ethernet hooked to 700mhz P3v4x ASUS Sys.

CPU Temps on Soyo P4S

Yes... problems with temp are very obvious.

Myself and two others I work with bought Soyo P4S mobo's. 2 with OEM Northwood 2.0A's and one with 1.8/256.

Mine (NW 2.0A) keeps reporting temps of 50-52c or 120-124f. My boss has the 1.8 and it's doing the same thing. He and I replaced the aluminum Volcano HSF with a SWIftech MCX478 copper HSF, with absolutely NO CHANGE in temp readings. Even after the SWIftech was installed (pain in the _ _ _ because the mobo had to come out of the case to install) I went immediately into CMOS health check 30 seconds after powerup (after the system was down for an hour COLD for copper changeover) and the temp was immediately 50-52c.

Furthermore, I found out today that my other co-worker with the P4s/NW 2.0a initially forgot to connect his Volcano HSF to DC when he first built his system. He took temp readings before and after hooking the HSF up to the power, and it MADE NO DIFFERENCE in the CPU temp readings whatsoever.

As for OC'ing, I haven't had much luck. I'm running everything stock. BUT: I have two 512mb OEM "Alpha-Omega?" PC2700 memory modules on this P4S. I have had flaky problems trying to run it at 167x2, but it's been rock solid at 133x2. Disappointing since I paid good money to run it at 333.

Also - my boss discovered after paying for ECC memory that his Soyo P4S won't even boot with ECC. This may be no accident or amazing discovery with the P4S, but we were not aware of the ECC issue ahead of time (still need to check the P4S manual / Soyo website on this one).

Thanks for the info... keep it coming.

SlyDog

P4s drag ult temp

Well anyone have any luck with temp reading?
Talk to cust serv?
I need to.

had to install another ethernet card to get new cable modem to work. Had a MAC error on boot ( beleive started after Bios update to ***3. Didn't know what it was till cable instalation prob.
disabled ethernet card and put a PCI one in..Cable good.
Even with that error I was able to network my to my old sys, no prob.

Gonna try clearing CMOS and reflashing BIOS. when I get time this weekend.

Any replies good or bad would be helpfull.

Slydog, u and your buddies having any luck?

Seems my name is unexceptable in this group so. I've used this name for 6 years in gaming/ forums ect and never been kicked out of anything. So goodbye. I'll be at OCs of Autstrailia

http://www.overclockers.com.au/

I dont have any probs with temperature. That may be because I use the Swiftech MC478 HSF which is a monster. I dont pay attention to the readings. Either the mobo will boot or it wont.

I just got done writing a whole reply and when I tried to post it, it said I was no longer logged on and I lost it so here goes again.

I have P4S with 2aa3 bios from new. I have same temp probs. Unhooked my stock Intel HS, ran BXburn and temps didn't move. Installed new Aluminum Volcano today (after lapping and adding AS2 for good measure) and still the same. HS temp is at 16C using Raytek MiniTemp non-contact temp sensor. I'm not sure if it's something in bios or something to do with ITE8705F monitoring chip, maybe it's a problem with wrong component values on mobo. I will e-mail them tonight.

I also had prob with NIC. Initially it had no address and would give me and error on boot-up. Soyo tech support emailed me a ee.exe util and a dat file to reflash the NIC eeprom so now it boots without error - I haven't tried to use it yet though as I've been too busy trying to OC the mobo, I'm still using the pci NIC I put in to get me on line.

One major prob I had was with my old pci promise raid card and quantum drives. I tried to use it initially to boot up, I was then going to migrate the drives to two Maxtors on the onboard HTP raid - but it didn't want to talk to the pci raid controller. Card would show up in boot up but wouldn't load the bios so it wouldn't search for it's drives. The reply fron Soyo was "that it's probably a compatibility problem" - YA THINK !!!, and that "I should use the onboard raid" dohhhh. Just to add insult to injury, my sandra drive index on my old sys (promise ata66 raid w/two ata66 20G Quantums) was 31191, on the P4S it's only 20372 (w/two ata66 20G Maxtors) which is actually slower than my 40G Maxtor ata133 @ ata100, DI for that is 27,181. WTF I had to go buy the 40G so that I could DriveImage my old raid and copy it to the new raid, I didn't want to erase the old raid just in case it didn't work and I'd be royally screwed then.

I managed to get my 1.8 up to 2100 with the clock ratio at 1:1, but as soon as I changed it no boot, I had to reset the bios. I have 256M of Kingmax PC2700 and was very dissapointed, it wouldn't even go to 133x2, it would lock up. I tried moving it to the second slot and it worked fine, presently at 100 fsb but 167x2 for the mem no problems. Sandra showed increases as I went from 100x2 to 133x2 and 167x2.

Next thing is to now try both overclocks together - hope it works. I'll keep ya posted.

Edit:
One other thing I forgot. I don't seem to be able to change the Vcore. I can change it in the bios but SmartGuardian and MBM still show it at 1.7v and when I reboot and go into the bios PC Health screen it is still at 1.7v I guess I'm goning to have to Vid pin this CPU.

Temperature on P4S

As I can see you feel that the mobo is doing something wrong with the temps. Well I also believed that until I saw mbm5 and smartguardian simultaneously. Mbm5 reads 2 temps! one at 75C and one at about 25C. Smartguardian reads 50. Think about it! Why Intel put this aluminium cover on P4? It is an on die heatsink! The trick here is that there are no mobos that read the P4 internal diode.Is anybody there to believe that the P4 northwood works at 31C idle(Asus P4TE)?!? But Soyo did not obeyed to the directives that Intel is gave to the company,like all mobo manufacturers. It is simple. The flexible sensor that is referred in the manual of P4S is not one but two sensors!!!!! One reads the internal diode and the other is an external sensor!!! The average of the readings is the temp that you see with Smartguardian! Just make th calculations and you will understand. Mbm5 reads both of the sensors because ITE gives these information. If you do not believe that P4 is so hot inside just go at Overclockers Australia and see an article measuring the temp of P4 by making a hole on it and putting inside a sensor!!!

It's not so much that I don't believe that the core runs that hot, but when I unpugged my hs fan and let the HS get hot the cpu temp only went up a few degrees. I'm having a hard time believing that the core runs at 50C when idle and 54C runing BXburn and the HS fan disconnected.

I do recall reading about an onboard temp sensor but could not find a flexible one, the only thing near the cpu that may be being used for temp sensing is a "diode" like component near the socket. I believe there are actually two temp sensors in the core, one for external reporting (like the P3) and one for internal monitoring which is used to control the throtle feature.

This was only one of the problems I've had with this board, as you can see from my post. I did however manage to get my cpu to 2.1 and my memory to 300. My next step will be to Vid pin as I'm still stuck at 1.8v max.

The SOYO D U only supports unbuffered non ECC DDR. Moreover, 2700 only in two slots not three and currently is waiting for a bios upgrade to support the mPGA "Northwood", though I'm not sure SOYO knows it! I wish I wrote in Chinese because they don't seem to read my email.

New Bios

You can solve the vcore problem with the 2ab1 bios.You can find it at www.soyo.com.tw. It updates the chipset,so you can have finally 1.85 vcore(which makes useless my vidpin mode that i made on my 1.8 Northwood). I am having my Northwood running at 2734 Mhz. I stepped back to 2400 and some readings surprised me! 2aa2 bios at 2400 Mhz showed my cpu as Northwood B. Now it shows it as Northwood A at all frequencies. Also some other readings from Sisoft Sandra make me think that Soyo is one more time the best mono manufacturer. The 2ab1 bios turns the chipset to 645DX!!! Capabilities and speed are now similar to this new version of the chipset(believe it or not I am benchmarking my machine twice a day).Even my 60 Gb Maxtor ATA-133 runs faster! Just try it.

Sorry. I should have mentioned that I do have the 2ab1 bios and it didn't make any difference to my core voltage, it was still unable to reach 1.85. The psu is a 650 enemax so I doubt that that is the problem.

Even if you are running at 1.5vcore, the true vcore is about 1.42-1.44. This is the way this mobo works. With 2aa2 bios I could get 1.77. Now I can get 1.80.

Soyo P4S,512 SpecTec DDr333,P41.8N@2734,Hercules 4500,60 GB ATA133 Maxtor,Live 5.1.

I'm having serious misgivings about this board - it just doesn't seem to be working as well as I expected. The latest thing I have found is that the dip switch setting don't seem to work. I tried 00101 and 01010 and then used "Load Optimized Settings" as instructed in the instruction manual - nothing changed on the fsb/mem ratio clock, all it did was change a bunch settings I had turned off such as FD and serial ports. The 00101 should have set the fsb to 112 and the ratio to 4:3 but it didn't and as it booted it still showed 1.8 cpu speed

On top of the core voltage issue, the cpu temp issue, the PCI RAID card issue and the MAC issue I had I'm not happy about it's onboard RAID performance and it's memory performance. My two ATA66 7200rpm 20G Maxtor drives using the onboard RAID only give a DI of 20,000 in Sandra - anyone else getting this? According to the Sandra database I should be seeing 30,000+ which I tend to believe as that is the kind of DI I was getting with my old system and my Promise PCI Raid card.

Finally, the memory score in Sandra is very poor. I have my 1.8 running at 2.1 (117 fsb) with the mem at 312 (117 X 2 x 4/3). It is 256M of Kingmax PC2700 and the memory settings are at 2:6:2:2:2:1:Fast:Norm:Norm:tRAS+tRP:Auto. Here's the kicker, my Sandra score is only 1602/1655 which isn't even as fast as a 1.6G w/PC2100 ram (according to the Sandra database).

Who else is experiencing problems?

What version of Sandra do you have? The latest version(1.8.5.9 I think) gives much better scores for both CPU and Memory. The RAID has some issues.You cannot use your cdrom there but it is as fast as it should be.It is better than other onboard Highpoint controllers on various mobos.I would like to mention that there are two versions of the P4S Dragon Ultra. I have the A2 version.I do not have most of the problems I have seen in many forums,especially problems in overclocking.Maybe A2 version is a little bit differenet in hardware when compared to the A1(this is not for sure,it is only an opinion).

Latest Sandra v2002.1.8.59 which interestingly enough shows the BoardTemp as 74c the CPUTemp as 26c and the Power/AuxTemp as 28c I'm not sure what that last one is but clearly it has the CPU and Board temps transposed. I also had an extra temp there for a while which has now dissapeared again.

The Mobo is a little over a month old and came with the 2aa1 bios installed so I suspect it is their latest board. Is there a way to find out which one it is?

I tried Vid pin mod to give 1.8 as default but I still can't get the voltage any higher than that, something else is stopping me. I notice that the voltage from the P4 12v connector is actually about 11.79v but the 12v line on the 4-pin molex (drive power) is 12.2v, I'm wondering if I should try a molex to p4 adapter to see if it helps. Which voltage line is the Vcore derived from? Maybe I will Vid pin mod it for the max default.

I have the Maxtors on the RAID all by themselves, maybe I will replace them with my Quantums and see if that makes a difference, I put the Maxtors in because they are quieter. I found that my 40G 7200rpm ata133 Maxtor on the IDE controller has a higher DI (27,000) than the onboard RAID but it is still way below my PCI Promise RAID on my P3-550 running @ 825.