Conclusion
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All of these different KT333 motherboards are showing amazingly close scores on nearly every test we shove at them. Either the amount of tweakability that the chipset has decreased with the KT333 or the amount of time that the motherboard manufacturers are spending on the motherboards is decreasing. In either event, what we are seeing is a gradual dulling of the motherboard market for AMD processors. There aren’t really any big guns out on the market – no single board that is standing out above the rest with or without a different chipset than VIA’s latest.This is both a good and bad thing. It means that no matter which board you choose, you are going to be getting competitive performance from it comparable to most other boards on the market. That’s a good thing… It also means that the hardcore DIY readers have no real landmark motherboard to purchase and tweak with. That’s not a good thing…but not horrible either. What is bad is seeing the performance of the platform beginning to plateau. That’s not good for AMD or any of the motherboard manufacturers. Will the KT400 chipset change this? Or are we going to have to wait for Barton core Athlon processors? Or maybe all the way until Hammer?
Getting past all that, the Soyo Dragon Ultra motherboard is a very good motherboard in its own light. It has good performance up there with the majority of the KT333 motherboards as well as a good amount of overclocking features and memory tweaking settings. It has IDE RAID and USB 2.0 to top off the full feature list. Having the 6-channel audio and the on-board 10/100 network interface just adds the icing on a good overall setup. Though, you will end up paying for all these goodies with the money out of your wallet as the Soyo Dragon Ultra is among the most expensive of the boards.
If for you the price difference isn’t an issue, I think most anyone would be happy to have the Soyo Dragon Ultra motherboard as the starting blocks to your new PC. These scores are getting old, but Soyo can put their Dragon Ultra on the same level as any of the other solid KT333 motherboards.
Be sure to visit the AMD Forums to get the latest information on this Soyo motherboard and anything else in the world of AMD hardware!
