Soltek K8TPro-939: Moving A64 to 939
by Wesley Fink on October 28, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
It is really good to see more Socket 939 motherboards appearing in the market just in time to house the new, lower-priced 90nm 939 processors. The recently reviewed Epox 9NDA3+ and this Soltek K8TPro-939 both add new 939 choices and good value to those new choices. This Soltek board costs about the same as the value 939 boards, but it offers a full set of features that compares well to any Socket 939 board. It is also a very fast performer at stock speeds, performing as well or better than any VIA K8T800 Pro motherboard that we have tested.However, the broken PCI/AGP frequency lock on the Soltek makes it a poor choice to get the most from the new 3000+, 3200+, or 3500+ Socket 939 processors. We saw in our recent review of the new 90nm processors that most could reach 2.6GHz with not much effort. With 2.6GHz as a target, it is easy to see that we would need a 289 setting for the 3500+, 260 for the 3200+, and 236 for the 3500+. With the AMD + Series locked at the top, the only 90nm that could come close to 2.6GHz on the Soltek would be the 3500+, which, at 228 x11, could reach 2.51 Ghz. There is no such issue with the FX processors, since they are unlocked up or down, but frankly, they are very expensive and the end-user is not likely to be looking for a value Soltek to use with an $800 CPU.
The other issue with the Soltek is that 4 double-sided DIMMs will not run at DDR400, as the Soltek resets the memory speed to DDR333 at 2T. If you need to use 4 DIMMs at DDR400, then look elsewhere until Soltek fixes this problem.
Both of these issues are very disturbing with the Soltek board because it is full of features and a great performer at stock speeds. It does not suffer from any reboot issues and is exceptionally stable at stock speeds and any setting up to 228. If Soltek can correct the broken lock and 4 DIMM problems with a BIOS update, the Soltek would be one of the fastest and most stable 939 boards that we have tested; but the warts are too large with the current BIOS to recommend, if you require 4 DIMMs or robust overclocking.
The Soltek is a fast, stable 939 board at stock speeds with 2 DIMMs. If that is what you are looking for, the Soltek is a great value. We hope that Soltek will fix the issues in the current BIOS. If they do, we will report that here in an update. To Soltek, we would say, fix the BIOS and this board will be a winner. An excellent alternative with the same K8T800 Pro chipset, a working PCI/AGP lock, top performance with 4 DIMMs, and similar price is the Abit AV8. It is not as full-featured as the Soltek, but everything works as it should. We found that the working AGP/PCI lock allowed us to reach a clock frequency of 280 in our Abit AV8 overclocking tests. At a higher price, the Asus A8V is also an excellent choice based on the same VIA chipset that reached 289 in our overclocking test bed.
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WT - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
A Soltek response in the forums:http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...
horsefly24 - Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - link
Here is an update to the Soltek SL-KT8 Pro motherboard to the DDR400 bios problem http://www.soltek.de/soltek/download/download_all....bob661 - Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - link
#16I have one of those boards but haven't tried the hothardware.com suggestion. I don't feel comfortable with cranking my HT up to 230 just to see if the damn locks work. Also, I'm going to try lowering the HT multiplier to see if that might enable the lock. I just wish Anand was a bit more precise in explaining how he got his lock to work.
Schro - Sunday, October 31, 2004 - link
>We suspect that this generates enough US volume>that Soltek must wonder what the real value of
>a US distributor would be.
Soltek HAD an exclusive US distributor, a company doing business as "Soltek USA". They were one of the best distributors that I have ever dealt with (sent plenty of promo packs ;)... ). They called it quits because Soltek Taiwan sold direct to the Egg, who was supposed to be purchasing from the US distributor. This undercut Soltek USA's business, etc etc. Hence, they have been gone for over a year now.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
#16 - We also tried 233 on the Soltek which also did not work.As for 939 reviews, the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939 is a lower cost version of the GA-K8NSNXP-939, which we have already reviewed. Since we have already reviewed the flagship Gigabyte 939, we will not be reviewing the lower members of the same family. The same applies to the lower-featured versions of some MSI boards.
The Asrock is based on the Uli chipset, and it's a possible review for the future. However, with PCIe boards coming, an AGP/PCI board with both sockets 754 and 939 probably won't find a slot in our review calendar.
thebluesgnr - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Another great review, thank you Wesley.About PCI/AGP lock:
"However, no matter what lower ratio we chose, the highest CPU clock setting that we could achieve with stability was 228"
Some VIA K8T800 Pro boards without working locks have PCI/AGP dividers for 233 and 266MHz "FSB". Have you tried going from 228 directly to 233 on this board?
About that, I remember the MSI K8T Neo2 review. You wrote:
"We have been assured that shipping K8T Neo2 boards will have working PCI/AGP locks and we are passing this information to you."
I've seen many people complain that their boards do not have working locks; I've read this in a review (HotHardware.com):
"From 200MHz to about 212MHz, the K8T seemed to function normally. But at speeds from 212MHz through 230MHz, the board occasionally wouldn't POST. Speeds above 230MHz consistently worked, but we weren't very confident in our particular board's overclocking ability."
It would be great if you guys could get one of these from retail channel (and not directly from MSI) to check this out and update that review.
Anyway, with this Soltek review there are only two socket 939 boards listed in newegg not reviewd by AnandTech: ASRock K8 Combo-Z (cheapest s939 mobo, by $31) and Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939. If you could let us know if you'll review them I'd appreciate it. ;)
Gnoad - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
If there eventually is a BIOS update to this board that fixes the AGP lock, anandtech really needs to do a second review, or at least an update. This board looks like my future purchase if there ever is a updated bios.KrazyDawg - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
With the newer Asus motherboards, you won't have a problem with resetting the CMOS. There's an option to load defaults in the BIOS and if you're overclocking with an Asus motherboard and it fails to POST, it will reset the values to the ones previously used before you made the adjustment.Aikouka - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
#3, that floppy location is a pain, because if you ever have to get to the BIOS reset jumper, it makes it a lot harder, especially if you have a large case. I have a Thermaltake Xaser III V2000A, and it's a fairly large case. So a lot of my cables are stretched as far as they can go (especially from the PCI IDE card) and the floppy cable is no exception. At one point, I wanted to reset the bios, because the board was acting funny, and this was made extremely difficult by the location of the floppy connector and the bios reset jumper's location. One of the two should be moved to allow easier access. Also, the front panel connectors (Power switch, etc.) are below that, putting even more tight cables in the way.Looking at the picture, the JBAT jumper is located right beside the floppy cable, making it a pain to work with anyway.
Just like on the SL-K8ANE2-GR the purple doesn't suit it very well.
Soltek is really good with customer support, though. I was having problems with my board and they even sent me a beta BIOS to try out. Responses came back within 3 hours (usually around 1 hour.)
Wesley, I don't know chip prices off-hand or anything, but I can't see how VIA's solution would add a great cost to the board when Chaintech sells a VIA ENVY pci sound card, which retails for $25 (retail) on newegg.
UnderScore - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
Wesley,I like that AT includes content creation & encoding tests and I realize that games are popular repeatable ways to stress test a system. Perhaps these MB reviews could be less focused on game performance and more on the MB's subsystems? Why not prove that the Gigabit LAN will be slower on the PCI bus rather than guessing that it will likely be slower. Am I to assume that USB, Firewire, Onboard digital I/O etc by default are all working perfectly if they are not mentioned? Testing & reporting of such items would make AT's testing methodolgy more balanced since just like #4 & #9 mentioned, not everyone is an overclocker & similarly not everyone plays games regularly (esp FPS).
In closing, I thank you for all the work that you do & I hope you take this constructively as I had not intended to slam you or AT.
Thanks,
James