Soyo's 6BA+ Series

Recently, we posted reviews of Abit's latest motherboards based on the BX-chipset, the BE6-II and BF6. In our latest motherboard review, we decided to take a look at a product from one of Abit's biggest competitors, Soyo.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Soyo products, they've actually become quite a competitor to Abit in terms of feature set. For instance, their newer products feature a jumperless design (with CPU settings adjustable via system BIOS) and multiple bus speeds for overclocking - basic ingredients for most overclockers.

In fact, the 6BA+IV reviewed today offers more bus speeds than Abit's legendary BX6 2.0 and newer BE6 motherboard!

As the name implies, the 6BA+IV is the fourth revision in Soyo's 6BA+ line of motherboards. Designed for the high-end market, notable features among the 6BA+ series include the 5/2/1 PCI/ISA/AGP combination and 4 DIMM sockets for up to 1GB SDRAM.

Abit fans look out; each new revision of Soyo's 6BA+ series is intended to compete squarely against Abit's latest product. And as we've noticed, each new revision becomes more competitive with Abit than the last.

Take for instance, the original 6BA+. While it offered 7 different bus speeds (including the well-received 124MHz setting, previous products frequently jumped from 112MHz to 133MHz) and a jumperless design, it didn't go over the top with its feature set compared to Abit's BH6 motherboard.

The 6BA+III motherboard added 20 additional FSB settings, for a grand total of 27 different options for overclocking the CPU. This feature alone placed it above the top in the minds of many consumers and online journalists. The only feature it lacked was support for the ATA-66 interface.

That brings us to the 6BA+IV, Soyo's latest 440BX motherboard. With all the popular overclocking features present in previous Soyo products and the addition of ATA-66 support via the popular HighPoint ATA-66 controller, the 6BA+IV solves the one feature Abit had over Soyo. So does the 6BA+IV offer anything else over the 6BA+III? How well does it stack up against Abit's products?