Performance and Installation
Installation was a breeze and
nothing strange happened with our testbench setup. The OS install
was very easy to do, and using F6 to install our Promise RAID array
was uneventful. We do need to mention that you need to be very
careful with the Soltek SATA cables. They have a 90 degree bend and
proved to be difficult to remove once installed. We actually ended
up breaking off the SATA header on one of our WD Raptors by
accident. We do welcome the newer SATA cables, but you need to be
careful!
We had no problem with our
install, and even the driver installation went smoothly with no
BSOD's, lockup, and whatnot. What we've witnessed in previous 939
platforms were a lot of reboots, BSOD's and just general frustrating
events, but with the Soltek everything went by smoothly. Once
establishing a baseline from which to start our tests we noticed
that the CPU temperature was extremely high. We were using the
retail HSF that came with our 3500 Winchester, but for some reason
the temps were higher than with other motherboards. At first we were
uncertain if the problem was due to the motherboard misreading the
CPU temp or if our heatsink just flat out sucked. A quick email to
Soltek proved that they had their motherboard configured to use the
3500's built in sensor which would explain the high temps. Now we
were confused because we had the impression that this was the way
that all boards are. We decided to get a second opinion and started
up Sandra 2005 to check. Sure enough Sandra was reporting
temperatures much. At this point we said to hell with it and left it
at that. If it makes you nervous to run your CPU at 80C as reported
by Solteks hardware monitor, then just use Sandra for now until
someone fixes the problem. Sandra reported it around 35C and the
board ran flawlessly, so we decided to trust Sandra. If the 3500
blows up we'll update the review... Retail AMD processors are always
recommended just for this reason!
Our setup was as follows:
We tested our configuration using default and
overclocked settings. For default we left our x800 Pro at the stock
setting of 472mhz core and 450mhz memory speeds. During our
overclocked benchmarks we used 585mhz core and 585mhz memory. The
CPU was overclocked to 11x243 at 1.60vcore using memory timings of
2.5-3-3-7 at the Soltek's vddr setting of 2.8v. We were able to coax
a tad bit more out of our processor but sometimes it was stable and
other times it wasn't so we left it at a good general overclock
which we thought was the best to benchmarks for. One thing to note
that was very important is that we witnessed some real challenges in
overclocking our Soltek board. The very first few hours we had it we
nothing but frustration. After pulling our heads out of our #@$!#@
we found out that the HTT setting was still at 1000mhz which was
giving us problems. As soon as we dropped this option down the board
opened up like mad!
11x245 was pushin it, but we were able to coax a bit more out of
it...
This was about it. We were able to get it to 250fsb but not without
dropping the multi down to 10X which we thought would yield slower
benchmarks. 250fsb on this board was disappointing, until we saw the
numbers being generated. The Soltek is the fastest motherboard we
have ever tested to date.
Even at 200fsb the overall power of the AMD Athlon is always
apparent.
The P4's will always pull ahead in Sandra's MMX test.
We cheated a little by running 2-2-2-5 with our PQI memory, but
most good memory is made for PC-3200 2-2-2-5 timings
Now we're talkin' We're in FX-55 territory now with our $250 CPU
Still not hitting dual P4 marks, but very close.. not bad for a
single CPU.
This is at 2.5-3-3-7 timings at Soltek's 2.8vddr setting which is
more like 2.7vddr. MORE VDDR PLEASE!
Futuremark's 3DMark Series
A big thanks goes out to
Futuremark for hooking us up with Pro versions of our favorite
benchmarking suite "3DMark". With the latest v350 patch, 2003 seems
to be a lot more accurate than it used to be, compared to when it
first came out and was shunned from the hardware and benchmarking
community.
Overclocked CPU-243x11 /
Overclocked x800Pro-585-585 in red
Default CPU-200x11 / Default
x800Pro-472-450 in purple
As you can see, the overclocking scales very well! The Soltek at
243x11 with a x800 pro seems to function quite well in our synthetic
benchmarks.
Too much fun not to post this... There is life left in the K8T800
Pro chipset!
Feel free to compare our links on the ORB.
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