An announcement for the SL-K8TPro-939 review by Mr. Fink

[X2C]

Lydia:

I cant for the life of me get any 9800SE video card to be stable on this board.
I thought that the card was stuffed so I took it back to get another one only to have the same problem.

Could you please put one it your test system and try to run 3DMark05 right through all tests and see if it makes it?

Nothing was clocked when I tried it and it keeps locking up and rebooting the PC. I'm still using the BETA Bios you sent me.

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi X2C,
Since we can't obtain the "Crucial Ballistix PC3200 DDR400" in Taiwan, it's very hard for us to replicate the symptom at our end.
The BETA BIOS is created by testing a pair of Kingston/DDR400. Therefore it may not be applicable to your RAMs. Sorry!

Thanks and regards,

 

[angrsquirrel]

Originally posted by: X2C

Originally posted by: angrsquirrel

X2C, I was looking at using the Thermalright XP-120 on my SL-K8Tpro-939. Do you know if I need any additional components to buy other than the heatsink and fan to hook this up to my CPU? Where did you end up getting the heatsink/fan combo from? Thanks!

Nah the cooler will go stright on
I brought it through DSE here in New Zealand for $130 for the HSF Combo

I just got my xp-120 cooler & fan. For those who are thinking of getting one, there is something to note as to fit. The bracket that mounts onto the motherboard can go on two different ways. The best way to mount the bracket is so that the heatpipes point to the ram. If you mount it the other way, it will mess up a bunch of resisters next to the CPU.

Also, if you do it my way, make sure you stick a piece of paper between the heat pipes and the stick of DDR ram you have in bank one. Otherwise, the heatpipe will short out the ram and give you problems (as I found out the hard way). Right now, with AS 5 I and a fan putting 100cfm of air at the HS, I get an idle temp of 41c with Speedfan. I still have not been able to keep my rig stable at anything other than stock speeds. How Dakishi got an overclock of 2.75 ghz is beyond me. I can't get my baby above 2.40 ghz. If I run set the HTT to anything more than 240 it will reset back to 200. Dakishi has his HTT at 275.

 

[Macro2]

Lydi,
Why did Soltek put the PCI-X 16 slot so far down on the nforce4-939 board? Seems like this could create a cooling problem for a video card and possbly block a PCI slot of which there are only TWO. Would have rather seen 3 PCI slots and only 2 PCI-X-1 slots.

 

[Unaimed]

angrsquirrel: I have found that lowering the mem frequency lets you overclock much more. I was running 235-240 with ram 1:1 stable and now 255 stable (not tested higher) with my ram in 5/6 divider.

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Macro2,
According to our R&D engineer, there should be no overheating problem when running the PCI-E card and PCI cards on the SL-NF4Pro-939. We have not heard of any overheating issues reported by customers, either.
So you may not need to worry about it.

Thanks and regards,

 

[Oris]

Okay I just bought the SL-K8TPro-939 from Newegg and was trying to install it last night. But I have been running into some problems with my Plextor DVD-RW drive booting off the windows 2000 bootable installation disk.

First off the BIOS and Boot Selector is detecting my DVD drive.

I have also pressed ESC at the beginning of the boot up to chose what to boot from, when it comes up I pick the DVD drive but nothing happens. The DVD LED comes on as a yellow color for a while then it proceeds to flash a green light.

Another thing that I have tried was booting off of 4 floppy disk with the Windows 2000 bootdisk. That works fine but when I proceed to install Windows 2000 and it ask me for the CD, it can not read the CD.

The CD works fine in my laptop. I also tried an older CD drive in place of the DVD drive.

Also if I try to boot off my old hard drive with Windows 2000, it starts to work but right before it gets to the logon screen i get a blue screen of death saying something about invalid device drivers.... im guessing it is my old mobos raid drivers conflicting with it.

Any Suggestions?

-Oris-

 

[dashiki]

my saphire 9800se worked fine on my board

 

[Daddyjaxx]

Does this board support Venice?

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Originally posted by: Daddyjaxx
Does this board support Venice?

Yes, it does.

Thanks and regards,

 

[Hardtarget]

Originally posted by: LydiAtSoltek

Originally posted by: Daddyjaxx
Does this board support Venice?

Yes, it does.

Thanks and regards,

Thanks so much for replyign to this! I am now deffinitely going to buy it for the new venice 3000+ for my girlfrien'ds new system. NCIX up here in Caanda is having a sale on your motherboard and so far from my research I've been very impressed.

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: LydiAtSoltek
Hi Brian48,
It's okay. After you test the BETA BIOS on the new M/B, please let us know the result.

Thanks and regards,

Lydia,

Just to follow up on this, I've finally reinstalled the motherboard. Would have done it sooner, but I had a project to finish off first. Anyway, same problem as before so I tried the 2nd beta BIOS you sent me. So long as I use DIMM#1 and #2, this BIOS seemed to have solved the problem. I can now set and run at 1T with the memory running at the correct SPD settings. Currently running my 3000+ slightly overclocked (o/c'd 9x230HTT, 2070mhz) for stability testing. No major issues thus far. Thank you very much and please, pass my regards to your development team for the extra effort. Brian

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Brian48,
Thank you very much for feedback.
I will pass this good news on to our BIOS engineer and he shall glad to know it.

Best regards,

 

[jcmartel75]

Lydi,

I've gotten another board to switch out with mine(the Promise RAID has never worked) so now, I should be able to get the Promise RAID working on this new one. My question is... 64bit drivers? I'd like to install WIN64 soon and I've been gathering 64bit drivers but, I can't find any drivers for the Promise RAID. Do they exist yet? If so, where can I download them? thanks very much

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Jcmartel75,
Actually the Promise company has not released the RAID driver for WIN64. Therefore it is unavailable now. Sorry!

Thanks and regards,

 

[spdfreak]

Anyone try a dual core with this board yet? Just wondering if there is any real world experience yet.

 

[sixcell]

SL-K8TPro-939 with ATI 9800Pro Locking up (Possible Solution)


Hi,

I just want to put this out there for others in the same predicament.

My problem was the PC would freeze at the beginning of 3D games.
Sometime the pc would freeze/blank out after 10mins of working in Windows.

My previous system, with the same video card, ran the same games fine. (just with a lower setting)
It was a Soltek board also with the following: AMD 2100, KM266A, 3 sticks of 256 MB Crucial PC2100.

My current setup: (No Overclocking Anywhere (CPU/Mem/Video))

Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 Bios v1.5
ATI 9800pro 128mb (AGP)
AMD 64 3500 (939 & Venice)
2 Sticks of 512MB Patriot Dual Channel DDR400 (in Dual Channel mode & using Dimm 3+4) I'm sure Dimm1+2 would be OK
Antec 430W PS
Samsung SATA (Connected to VIA SATA Controller) Set as the Master Boot Drive
Maxtor PATA (Connected as Slave on Secondary IDE)
2 DVD Burners (Connected as Master&Slave on Primary IDE)
Using Onboard Sound & NIC (All PCI Slots free. No need)
3 Case Fans

Windows XP Service Pack 2 (patches up to date) Fresh install due to all his HW upgrade.
ATI Driver & Control Panel (Current version as of this post)
VIA 4-in-1 (Current version as of this post)
DirectX9.0c (Current version as of this post)

Finally, what you been waiting for, my solution:

In Bios:
-DISABLE Fast Write AGP
-AGP Voltage = Default
In Windows:
-Set to AGP 4X in ATI control panel (make sure Fast Write is disabled there also)
-THATS IT!!!!

The performance takes a minor hit with AGP 4X instead of 8X. But at least it is STABLE!!!!

Things I tried that made NO difference or made it worse.
-Upgrade PS from CoolerMaster 350W to Current Antec 430W (It wouldn't hurt)
In Bios:
-Set AGP Voltage in Bios to 1.6, 1.7. Too scared to try 1.8. Ran better but still crashes.
-Disable/Enable AGP Read/Write WS, AGP 3.0 Calib
-Original drivers on Soltek MB CD.
-Reinstalled VIA 4-in-1 and ATI drivers numerous times.
-Turned off VPU? in ATI Control Panel (that ATI recovery tool).

Games that ran ok so far:
BF2 1024*768 Med quality
HL2/CSS 1024*768 Default settings
UT2k4 1024*768 Default settings.

My CSS stress test went from 73fps to 133fps with this upgrade.

Good luck!

 

[Thely]

I have had the Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 for about amonth and a half. I have been trying to O/C it for the last few days and have come up with nothing that will remain stable. i am new to o/cing and ever "general" noobie guide i read sucks. i am setting the cpu volts and the fsb speeds to try to obtain an oc position. What else can i do? am i missing something? also on the SATA loading screen i get a "BIOS not installed" error but the comp loads anyway and when i try to fix it i the comp wont boot at all and i get a ntlr error. in my device manager i get an exclamation mark by WinXp promise fastrack. everthing seems to run fine except i cant shut down and restart without getting an error message that asks me to report the problem to windows, but there is no problem that i can see. also. any temp monitoring software that you guys recomend.

amd 3200+
4- 512 crucial value select
6600 gt
1 SATA drive as main
1 ATA drive as slave
thermaltake 480 watt silent power
3 80mm fans, 1 120 mm, venus on cpu, a pci card slot exhaust fan

 

[adrianx]

hello to all...

for LydiAtSoltek....

i see yours pics....
http://server2.uploadit.org/files/LydiAtSoltek-K8_3000.JPG
http://server2.uploadit.org/files/LydiAtSoltek-K8_3800.JPG

i have a sl-k8tro-939 on my desk with one 3000+, 2x512 Mb Geil value, and a 6800GT 256Mb, 2x80Gb Hdd in raid 0 (on promise), the cooler is M6 from TR2 (http://www.tr2tt.com/products/coolers/m6se/m6se.htm) with fan adaptor and 1 fan of 120mm.

like you i, install windows xppro-sp2..and updates..
i install HM and restorm2, from the mobo disc.

it no OC the temperature jump... from -12 -10 to 20, 34, 90, and... most...i see.. at 234 celsius

i think it is an conflict or error on read from senzor, but just after i install redstorm...

i dont see on you desktop any icon of redstorm .... only HM

i need to know if it is correct that i say.

on the mobo cd i see a ITE software, i believe that soltek_HM is read data from that chip.

i see that: if i install only HM, the temp. are... pozitive and ~ correct
if i install HM and Redstorm... the temperature are going mad... from -12 to +243 degree. and the rate of the refreshing data (temp.) are more fast , about 3 value on 1 second.

i confirm and i see that the agp and pci bus are at 66 and 33 Mhz, in any OC. i think that is ok.

soltek do good mobo

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Adrianx,
If possible, please download the "Soltek HM" and "RedStorm II" from the following links.
Then install them after you uninstall the ones in your system to see if the temperature goes well.

http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/downloa...er/others/hm/soltek/soltekHM(beta).zip

http://www.soltek.com.tw/soltek/downloa...thers/RedstormII/via/via-redstorm2.zip

Thanks and regards,

 

[adrianx]

hello LydiAtSoltek....

I do all that you say....but I install only HM at this time.

same problems.... temperature go mad from -10 to 23-30 and up to 230.

Now I have a new problem i think. my videocard (prolink 6800gt 256) it seem that nvidia driver say it is on PCI x0 the not true. But that is not a real problem. The problem is 2100 point in 3dmark05, with over 3000 point down (I do normaly over 5000 points in 3dmark05), and i dont see from were.

i dont do overclocking, I activate and deactivate Cool and Quit., no antivirus runing.

i reinstall 3dmark05 and only ~2100 points...were I fail?

 

[adrianx]

hello to all

LydiAtSoltek.....help me...

I flash the bios with ver. 1.6 all are good but now i dont see Cool and quiet options in bios.

The temp are like usual.... mad. (no problem that)

 

[adrianx]

hello ..... I'm back

i found this

when I use 4x512Mb geil value, the nvidia driver say... the card is on PCIx0 port, and all system are running very slow. if I use only 2 modules of ram it is OK. and the nvidia driver say the card are on AGPx8. the 3dmark05 go from 2100 to 5600 (normal).

I must say that the all 4 module are geil value DDR 3200 2.5 3 3 6 (at 400Mhz), but the module are NOT from a dual channel kit. (individual module). In 2-3 day I will test 2 dual channel kits of geil ultra (2x2x512Mb) and I will inform you about the tests.

it seems that nvidia driver 77.72 detects ram in the system and if see 4 dims belives that video card are on PCIx0. i belive that create a problem and system will (and actualy) run very slow.

I install and reinstal the driver...but not see any change.

any Idea?

P.S. i belive that more ram will deliver more speed.

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Adrianx,
The item "C'n'Q" in the latest BIOS W1.6 is deleted because this feature is activated through the CPU driver and Windows. So you need not set it in the BIOS.

Thanks and regards,

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Dear All,
I am afraid that this is the last time I speak as "LydiAtSoltek" in this forum because I am going to leave Soltek.
Thank you so much for all of your help and suggestions about Soltek products all the time. Although I am not going to be with Soltek, you can still get the support from my colleagues in Soltek.
Maybe we will meet in some other forums in the future.
I hope all of you will be always satisfied with Soltek products.

Take care & good-bye!!