Problems encountered with Soyo SY-P4S DRAGON Ultra Bios p4sx2ba3.bin

Hi -

I just purchased a Soyo SY-P4S DRAGON Ultra motherboard and have encountered a very serious problem with the new p4sx2ba3.bin bios.

It is true that Soyo did fix the voltage issues using a Northwood processor, but in doing so they broke overclocking !!!

Here is my test configuration:

Motherboard: Soyo SY-P4S DRAGON Ultra
Processor: Intel P3 Northwood 2.0 Ghz
Bios: p4sx2ba3.bin
Memory: 2x512mb Mushkin
Graphics Card: Visontek Geforce 2 Ultra


Here are my findings:

1.) If I set the CPU Voltage to anything other than default, the motherboard will not boot at anything over 120mhz FSB setting. Sometime it won't even go that high!!!

2.) I confirmed this by manually wiring the VID pins on the northwood processor to give me 1.75V default CPU voltage, and set the motherboard to default voltage. With this configuration, I can boot and run this processor stable at 133mhz+ FSB.

3.) If I then change the Processor Voltage in the bios to anything but default, the system again hangs at anything over 120mhz even though it has plenty of voltage.

From this testing, it seems that something is very broken in this bios....


If you have any more info on a way around this problem, please post a reply...

I have already emailed Soyo support about this, and will post any info I get from them

Regards
AZCadman

Sorry to hear you bought the P0S (ooops sri I meant P4S).

Go to Lost Circuits and read their review of this board and then go to vr-zone forum SIS chipset where about 90% of the posts are about this dragass dragon board.

You are not alone, there are many of us that have multiple issues with this board.

I have a 1.8 willy and have had it to 2.2G on prev bios's but the mem b/w was crap. Now I can't go past 111 fsb for a cpu speed of 2.0G

I agree, the bios really needs some attention. Other than that, the board really is good. You can easily bypass the volt thing with the vid wire. My dragon is cranking fine, my 1.8 is running 3.0ghz at 1.7 volts.

Yeah, those "Woodies" fly coz of that low default voltage. I bought this as a bundle, $279 for the board and a 1.8 so can't complain about the price but the early bios's had major flaws and even using the Vidpin trick wouldn't yield an Vcore greater than 1.75, and considering the default for the Willy is 1.7 I wasn't gonna get much of an oc out of it. Why they hobbled the oc'ing by only going to 1.85v is beyond me, give us 2.5 for crying out loud and maybe only make the upper range only available by using a jumper, then put a big assed warning in the book about enabeling it and killing your CPU to scare of the non-overclockers and leave the rest up to us.

This board has had so many problems. To mention a few, memory bandwidth, voltages, NIC losing it's MAC address and a high incidence of bios flash failure which wasn't helped by the numerous bios updates - they're on their 5th since releasing this board last December.

In my case it would not load the bios of my PCI Promise RAID controller (that was working just great on my BE6-II might I add) so forcing me to use my alternate drives (Maxtors) as I wasn't ready to erase my Quantums just yet (this board made me nervous) but I got crappy performance with those, when I finally went back to my Quantums and restored my drives from an image then I got better performance.

Now I'm working on my NIC problem, it doesn't like to talk to my DSL modem so I'm trying a Hub and Router approach but have had to get the router replaced and I'm still waiting for that to arrive. Hopefully I can get a network set up and put my kids on it so they can internet share and it will also trick my onboard NIC into talking to the modem, albeit through the hub and router - but whatever gets the task accomplished.

I think I'm gonna have to break down and get a "woody" though - there's a computer swapmeet in Glendale soon and I wan't to get another 40G ATA133 Maxtor so maybe I'll pick me up a P4 1.6A or even a 1.8A there as well.

Does anybody know if there has been a hardware mod developed for this board that gives more volatge out of the triphase regulators so I can juice my willamette a bit more? I'm only getting my 1.8 up to 2.0 and it's ****ing me off.

My cousin has a 1.8 willy and he can't get past 2.0 either. It just isn't meant to be. This is my first experience with a P4 (woody)and I am just astounded at how well it overclocks. That sux your having so many problems with your dragon. I bought one for work a few months ago and it was a dud. Tech support said take it back cause some of the first batches had problems. The one iI have now is fine. Good luck mang.