Intel i815 / i815E Motherboard Roundup - August 2000

Soyo SY-7ISM
CPU Interface	Socket-370
Chipset	Intel i815
Form Factor	microATX
Bus Speeds	66 / 100 / 133 137 / 140 / 145 / 150 / 160 / 166
Voltages Supported	Auto Detect
Memory Slots	2 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AGP Slot 2 PCI Slots (2 Full Length) 1 AMR Slot 0 ISA Slots
Onboard Audio	Yamaha YMF-752S AC'97 CODEC
BIOS	Award Modular BIOS 6.00PG

The SY-7ISM is the first Soyo board we've seen with Award Modular BIOS 6.00PG and also the first recent Soyo board to drop the Soyo Combo Setup. Instead we go back to the built-in Frequency/Voltage Control in the Award 6.00PG BIOS. Fortunately, everything is still jumperless, but what Soyo forgot to include was a way for 100 MHz FSB CPU's to overclock to 133 MHz FSB's and beyond. The same goes for 66 MHz CPU's trying to overclock to 100 MHz. Most manufacturers in this roundup have included jumpers to override the detected default FSB speed, the 7ISM must do without such a feature, greatly limiting it's usefulness as an overclocking motherboard.

Of course, the microATX layout is not the most appealing for overclockers, but the 7ISM does give an indication of what Soyo has in store for us with the full ATX board. Hopefully they'll have this minor kink worked out by the time that board is ready for release. For now, we are only able to show you FSB speeds for 133 MHz FSB CPU's as that was all that was available during testing of this board. Of course, these are the most interesting speeds for i815 users.

The 7ISM was also the only board to include an AMR slot, although this is appropriate since this is a standard i815-based board and thus with no real CNR support anyway. Unfortunately, they are also the only one to make this type of slot a dedicated slot, rather than sharing it with a PCI slot. This way, it takes up valuable PCB space that could be dedicated to another PCI slot - something that's sorely needed on something as small as this microATX board.

On the upside, the 7ISM was a very stable motherboard, and had no problem handling CAS 2 PC133 memory, unlike some other boards in this roundup. Of course, it only has 2 DIMM slots, so it doesn't have to deal with the 3 DIMM / PC133 situation.