Soyo AA3 BIOS Release

Company: Soyo Computer Inc.
Product: AA3 BIOS update for SY-6VCA & SY-7VCA Motherboard
Complete Chipset Spec's: http://www.via.com.tw/products/prod133a.htm
Date Reviewed: May 10, 2000

5 Minutes Later....

BIOS updates aren't a new thing, and normally just a news post is sufficient, but I was just in awe when I updated my Soyo board with the new AA3 BIOS that I thought I would post some memory benchmarks & BIOS screen shots to to show off the new stuff...

As shown from our previous review, here's what we accomplished in memory throughput from the aa2 BIOS at 781Mhz (142FSB)...

AA2 Memory - 317/366, that's with full tweaks running at 142FSB!

Now after flashing to the AA3 BIOS, we find this neat little feature added in the configuration screen. It's called Bank Interleave, which can be set to Disabled, 2 Way, or 4 Way.

Well here's some results showing different speeds & different Interleave settings:

550 (100FSB) 4 Way

770 (133FSB) 4 Way

781 (142FSB) 4 Way

 

781 (142FSB) 2 Way

781 (142FSB) No Interleave

Conclusions....

As you can see, setting the Bank Interleave to "4 Way" gives the best performance. This BIOS release is a major improvement for memory benchmarks, increasing our memory performance almost 25%!!! No doubt this will have an impact on our Q3A FPS, or crunching SETI blocks, it's probably not much, but every little bit helps.

To get the BIOS updates, head over to Soyo's FTP site...

 

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