SOYO P4I875P Version 1.0 Black Label Review

[CJE-P]

Use this forum thread to discuss SysOpt's Review of the SOYO P4I875P Version 1.0 Black Label Motherboard..

[Bat25]

Seems a fair assesment of the Soyo. I don't know if 'uknown' sub-components is fair. I would say more along the lines of "standard fair" or not excessively 'high end' components were used throughout the entire layout. Soyo should have a better warranty though - I do agree with that. Overall nice review for an often overlooked speedy 875p mainboard.

[Crashman]

Well, as a former board refurbisher, the idea of using unknown brands of capacitor scares me a bit. Probably 10% of my failed boards were Soyo...and 50% were probably Abit, but Abit fessed up to the problem and replaced the boards free. Pair that with a 1 year warranty, when most of these shoddy parts were failing around 1-2 years of use, and that scares me even more! And off-center holes on a high end board really pissed me off. But the board works like magic, so I thought it would be fair to tell people that.

I can't catch every potential problem on every board during the review process, but I like to think I'm providing the added information most sites do not, when that information might be important. I disagree with more review sites about the location of the AGP slot (I think it should be at the highest possible position), but other than that I think they just miss things. That's a lot easier to do when you're reviewing a greater number of products.

I like the board, but it really upsets me that my research has shown me no nearly perfect boards at this price point. It's the high end, problems such as Asus's VRM not providing tight enough control for bleeding-edge overclocking (on a bleeding-edge board), Soyo providing only 1.60v max vCore (and having that only provide 1.56v), and problems I've read about with other brands, this all frustrates me.

Soyo would have gained a lot more favor from me by making sure the screw holes were dead on, and giving me more vCore options. Those kinds of things are not a huge cost issue. I do understand that Soyo is a smaller company than Asus and has to save money where it can to compete, but we're talking pennies here, at the high end of the market $5 has little effect on a purchassing decision.

And I'll repeat, the board works great. Better than the Asus board. I don't know why it works better, but I reasoned that shorter memory traces might have helped them tighten up the memory timings a bit. And put the memory DIMMs in a less convenient location at the same time, but not significantly so.

[Bat25]

what was your max stable oc on that soyo? 1.6vc is pretty low. I have given props for the board elsewhere because I also noticed that the Soyo 875P worked quite well, but people really don't want to warm up to Soyo lately because of all of the past problems, which is somewhat understandable.

[Crashman]

Since 1.60v is actually 1.56v with this board, I could only get to 240MHz FSB with my 2.6C stably. I didn't try 241MHz though, I tried 240, 245.

A true 1.60v gets this CPU to 245MHz, and a true 1.65v gets it to 250MHz, on another board. The max for this CPU seems to be 251MHz bus at 1.675v on stock cooling.

But none of that matters on the Soyo, since the maximum the VRM provides is 1.56v at the highest setting (1.60v).

I'm thinking of getting a Prescott for the board so I can overclock at lower voltages. That's contingent on me selling my 2.6C.

[Bat25]

I just tested/ set up 2 Foxconn 875p's. No voltage tweaks at all. So I could only get 233 FSB max with 2.8c Other than that, the board itself was good. Both of those systems are out the door sold now. I spoke with their lead mainboard engineer (very accessible) and they said possibly a rev 2 will have voltage tweaks. Sounds like you like the way the Soyo runs. 245 is not too bad for the moderate overclocker, especially if the board boots and runs fast and stable. I was going to order the foxconn SIS 755, but im thinking the Soyo Black Label 875p (for myself). I may go with the Soyo. You seem to like it.

[Bat25]

Here is a pic of the foxconn~ It has Si3112a, and CH5 SATA controllers

[Crashman]

Yes, I like the board. But I still have to ***** about things that pissed me off! This was the HARDEST TO INSTALL board I've had in YEARS.

Remember, I said the board only provides 1.56v at the 1.60v setting, so that limits my 2.6C to around 240MHz.

But it works so well...

Now, the holes being off center will have less affect on people who have standard mounting post using the small diameter screws, because the hole is large enough to allow the screw to be off center, making up the difference. But my case has "screwless" mounting studs, which are nearly as large as the mounting holes, hence my mounting difficulties. Yes, I can blame Soyo, because this hasn't been a problem with other boards.

But it works so well!!!

The weak warranty, paired with capacitors of unknown quality, worries me a bit. Otherwise I'd give the board a solid recommedation. I'd recommend a board with the other problems? Sure, the other problems can be overcome! I can bend my mounting studs. I can make my own IDE cables. I can't extend the warranty.

And that info comes with one more caveat: I wouldn't have kept the board for my own system if I didn't have adequate experience replacing blown capacitors. I figured it was worth the risk because the possible consequences are not that severe for me.

It works great. I'd recommend it to anyone who understands the problems and risks and are willing to accept them in order to get a top performing board.

[Bat25]

I have done caps before, but would like to not have too strange that the holes didn't match though. Maybe a slight calibration offset, or is it an actual design flaw?

[Someone Stupid]

Doesn't surprise me things don't match up, never was a SOYO fan after their kt333 chipset FU's to everyone that got a bad one that wouldn't run some of the chips it was said to, not to mention a few other lovely quirks. Haven't went back to them once since. Glad your happy with yours. No mods you can do to boost the vcore since you already doubt it's lifespan with it's shoddy warranty?

[Crashman]

Bat25: I don't think it's a design flaw, it must be a flaw in the equipment, perhaps that equipment was machined wrong

Someone Stupid: The VRM doesn't physically support vCore greater than 1.6v as far as I know, and I hate to make any modifications which might affect my ability to test future processors in the same board.

[Blkjack]

Just got this board and it's very nice, I didn't have the same problem you had with the holes being off center at all. The extras that came with this board have all installed and work well (cigar box, SPDIF bracket) I myself love the AGP slot being move and the DIMM slots pushed further up and out of the way of the AGP slot. I have less need for the extra PCI slots than you I guess. I do have a problem with the intel_sataraid_v3.5 drivers, as it will not load, it comes up with "Incompatible Hardware" " Software is not supported by this chipset" Though the system information shows the Intel support loaded for the USB's. I don't know yet how to determine if it’s the latest and greatest set or not for the Intel(R) 82801ER I/O Controller Hub. I emailed Tech support at Soyo-USA but have gotten no response at all from them. (That pisses me off)
I had another issue with the ATI AIW 8900 I install but hope I have that worked out, I posted about it in the other forum that deals with that sort of thing. When it comes to OC I'm a real n00b at it and have had no luck at it with this board, as of yet. Could be because I don't have the "Supported DIMMS" that are recommended by Soyo. After doing some research on the "Kingston DIMMS" on other OC web sites, they highly discourage using them if your wanting to OC. This is the component list I selected for use with this board. Hardware is Soyo P4I875P dragon 2 v1.0 black label MB, ATI A-I-W 9800 Pro 128MB, OCZ Technology PC3200 DDR 400 512x2 CAS2.5 (Premier Dual Channel), LIAN LI Aluminum Mid Tower ATX –Model Lian Li PC-60, LG 4082B 8X DVD+/- (OEM) 8X -DVD and 8X +DVD, WD 120GB SATA Drive w/8MB Cache, Intel Pentium 4C - 2.8GHz FSB800 CPU, ThermalTake 420W ATX DUAL FAN P/S. I haven’t set up a SATA drive before and didn’t realize they set up as a different drive letter, in this case drive “I “ is my drive 0. Have to watch where all the programs want to install to and change the C:\ to I:\. If you have any recommendations of how to OC this board or a forum to go to I would appreciate that. I understand the CPU and the memory I selected maybe quite weak for Ocing. I will take me weeks to figure out if everything works all together with this setup.
All in all I am quite happy so far with this board compared to the ASUS, I just got for another machine I have. (VERY POOR tech support from them, THAT PISSES ME OFF)

[Crashman]

I believe the driver you can't install is the RAID manager, if you're not running a RAID array you probably can't install it. If you're running the RAID on the other controller and none on the Intel, you can't install the RAID manager for the Intel. Etc.

You can try increasing DDR Voltage, or lowering the DDR frequency, to overclock. Also you might need more CPU vCore to overclock. You really have to play around to find the right settings.

[Blkjack]

I’m not trying to use the Intel raid program. I’m just trying to install the services to the system to update the driver set. It’s supposed to install as a service to the chip system set drive. Does that make sense? Also I seem to have a SCSI controller loaded for some reason (D346PRT SCSI controller), Haven’t figured out yet where that comes from, as I have no SCSI devices or cards loaded. Do you find the Smartguardian utiliy accurate? I ran Sandra and it says my CPU is 74c but the Soyo Smartguardian utility says 44-47 C. That scares me a bit as I really don’t know if ether are even close to being right. Is there some place on the board to see what the voltages for the rails should be and what over or under voltages is normal? (Again what utility is most accurate for displaying feeds and speeds)

[Crashman]

I'm a little leary of monitoring software that motherboard makers provide, but I did find the voltages to be accurate. As for the chipset drivers, I just ran the Intel Update. For the RAID controllers, I disabled the ALi RAID controller chip in BIOS, it no longer appears. I'm not using the Intel SATA controller in RAID mode either. So the INF update is enough for me.