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Soyo 6VCA Motherboard Review
Soyo 6VCA Motherboard Review - PCSTATS
Soyo 6VCA is a good board because of the support in VIA133A products with Bios upgrades that allow for faster memory scores... but see for yourself!
 84% Rating:   
Filed under: Motherboards Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Soyo Jun 29 2000   B. Ly  
Home > Reviews > Motherboards > Soyo 6VCA

Soyo 6VCA Motherboard Review


The initial wave of VIA 133A motherboards were shipped months ago with much expectation because they offered a very attractive feature set.  They were the first to come up with an attractive Intel alternative for motherboards.  AGP 4X and UMDA/66 were native to this chipset, most importantly for overclockers, the VIA 133A chipset offered the important 1/2 AGP divider for overclockers reaching for 133Mhz FSB and beyond.  However, the obvious deficiency with these motherboards was with the incredibly low memory bandwidth scores.  I chose the Soyo 6VCA simply because Soyo seemed to be keenly interested in supporting their VIA133A products with Bios upgrades that would allow for faster memory scores.

The Soyo 6VCA is a ATX form factor, slot 1 motherboard, powered by the VIA 133A chipset. The VIA 133A chipset provides some attractive features like: AGP4X compliance (with 1/2 AGP divider,) as well as natively supporting UDMA/66.  The Soyo 6VCA also comes with the now common 1 AGP, 1 AMR, 5 PCI, and 1 ISA configuration.  Top top it all off, the 6VCA also comes with 3 DIMM slots, as well as onboard sound.

$160 CDN / $108 USD

Motherboard Specifications and Features:

Specifications of the Soyo 6VCA Motherboard:

DESCRIPTION

66/100/133MHz FSB Slot 1 Based ATX Motherboard

PROCESSOR

133MHz FSB Pentium III Processors 533B~1 GHz+

100 MHz FSB Pentium III Processor 450~800 MHz

100 MHz FSB Pentium II Processor 350/400/450 MHz

66 MHz FSB Pentium II Processor 233/266/300/333 MHz

66 MHz FSB Celeron Processor 266~300 MHz

66 MHz FSB Celeron Processor 300A~500 MHz with integrated 128KB full speed L2 cache

CHIPSET

VIA 694X Chipset

Supports 66/100/133 MHz FSB

SYSTEM MEMORY

Three 168-pin SDRAM DIMM sockets support up to 1.5GB

Support PC-100/PC-133 SDRAM

Provides ECC (Error Checking Correction) capability

EXPANSION SLOTS

Five 32-bit Bus Mastering PCI slots (v2.2 compliant)

One 16-bit ISA slots

One Universal AGP slots (support 1x/2x/4x mode)

One Audio/Modem Riser Connector (Revision 1.0)

ON BOARD AUDIO SUBSYSTEM

AC97 Codec on board to provide software audio solution

Built-in chipset Super I/O

Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART compatible)

One Parallel printer port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)

One FDD port (Supports LS120, 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88MB FDD)

Provides IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver

TWO ULTRA DMA-33/66 IDE PORTS

Two independent channels for four IDE devices

Supports up to PIO mode 4 and Ultra DMA 33/66

Two PCI bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports

BOARD DIMENSIONS

Four layers, 30.5 cm x 20 cm (12" x 7.9")

ATX form factor

BOOT-BLOCK FLASH BIOS

Award PCI BIOS with green, ACPI, APM, PnP, DMI functions and Year 2000 compliant

Supports multiple-boot from E-IDE / SCSI / CD-ROM / FDD / LS120 / ZIP

2 Mbit Flash ROM

SOYO AI-BIOS

ENHANCED PC HEALTH MONITORING

Built-in chipset hardware monitoring functions

On-board voltage monitors for CPU Vcore, VTT, +5v, +12V, and VBAT

CPU fan speed control & monitor

Precision CPU temperature monitoring through CPU on-die thermal diode

Battery Low detection

DOUBLE STACK BACK-PANEL I/O CONNECTORS

PS/2 Mini-DIN mouse & keyboard ports

Two USB ports

One D-Sub 25-pin female printer port

Two serial port

Audio I/O: LINE-Out x1 , LINE-In x1, MIC JACK x1

One game port

FCC CLASS B AND CE EMI REGULATION COMPLIANT

PC98 ACPI COMPLIANT

Supports up to 32 selectable sets of system and PCI clock speeds inside the BIOS directly, allowing for easy, no-jumper configuration!!
Innovative Sofset for CPU configuration
. Supports on-board Hardware Monitoring and includes Hardware Health Utility to streamline your PC system management Power-CPU-Up! Function: CPU core voltage is adjustable via jumper setting with four level. SOYO AI-BIOS: Four-way Active Interception CIH virus Design.Supports WOL (Wake On LAN) function to simplify network management .Provides SOYO COMBO setup- an user friendly mighty features setup on BIOS for professional users . Advanced Management Capabilities * Software power off control, Power-on by Alarm, Modem Ring On. RTC hardware to handle Y2K century rollover . Power Failure Resume Function and Suspend to RAM.

 

Soyo includes a quickstart manual, a floppy disk drive cable, 80 conductor / 40 pin Ultra ATA 66 cable and two CD's.  The Soyo CD includes the full manual for the motherboard, VIA drivers for the motherboard, Audio drivers for the onboard audio, and contact info for Soyo (sales and technical support.)  The second CD is a Soyo Bonus pack which includes the full, uncrippled versions of Norton Antivirus, Norton Ghost, and Norton Virtual Drive.  As I've mentioned many times before, virus protection is a very important feature for any computer system, and it's nice to see Soyo include such a competent suite of software for free.

© 2023 PCSTATS.com Next Page >

 

Contents of Article: Soyo 6VCA
 Pg 1.  — Soyo 6VCA Motherboard Review
 Pg 2.  Motherboard Features:
 Pg 3.  Onboard Features:
 Pg 4.  Overclocking the Soyo...
 Pg 5.  Final results

 
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