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

[dashiki]

I am running stable 1:1 at 233mhz can't get any higher. No response from soltek support yet but I emailed kingston and they got right back to me saying that all there chips were tested before being sold to run at the specs (ddr500) so it had to be a limitation of the mobo.

 

[dashiki]

there currently are not any programs that read the temp correctly flash to bios 1.4 and Soltek should be releasing a new HM soon

 

[spdfreak]

Well, I got my K8tpro and A64 3000 the other day and so far I have had good luck. It came with bios 1.3, and I have been slowly overclocking it a little bit at a time. Right now, it is running at 240 fsb with the memory divider at 166 and the HTT at 800. Prime stable overnight. I am using 1GB of PC3200 Corsair valueram with timings of 2.5, 3,3, 8 and 2.7v. The only strange thing so far is that default voltage for the cpu on this board is low (1.38) and I had to manually set it to 1.45 to get a true 1.4 as reported by sandra and cpuid. I think I may top out the fsb before I need to add any more voltage to the cpu but How high is safe with a stock cooler? Sandra says it is running 36degC during prime torture test which seems low. All in all, I love this board so far- we will see how far it will OC in the next few days. Once I get to 250 fsb, I should drop down to 133 and 600HTT?

 

[dashiki]

I'd be very happy If I could get it to run stable @250mhz with a 1:1 htt/ram

 

[Unaimed]

To Lydia when she comes back: Would it be possible to add temperature monitoring/voltage options for the north bridge? It feels like most people are being held still by it.

 

[dashiki]

would that be what is holding back the htt? would active cooling be better than the stock? or even maybe an after market zalman? this memory problem has really got me pissed.

 

[dakiwi]

Hello Lydia,

Are you still monitoring this thread ?

I want to know if you have a distributor/reseller in the Middle East ? The United Arab Emirates to be exact. I can't seem to find a link on the Soltek website that is of any help.

I'm building a 3500+ 'Winchester' system and would like to use the SL-K8TPro-939 mobo. If I can't find somewhere near me to buy one I'm going to have to opt for the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

I've emailed the contact I did find on the site. Waiting on a reply.

Thank you,

Dakiwi

 

[Unaimed]

dakiwi: Lydia will be back next week, she is celebrating new year.

 

[rocketman14]

well i put my system together sunday night and everything works great. i had no problems watsoever. i wanted to check to see my memory timings using sandra. can anyone tell me how i can do that? i went to memory bandwith benchmark and under logical/chipset 2 memory banks it says:

BANK 2- 512MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-5-5-5 2CMD
BANK 3- 512MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-5-5-5 2CMD
Channels: 1
Bank Interleave: 2-way

Does the 2 CMD mean 2T? Does the 1 for channels mean i'm running single channel?

 

[xeizo]

You have to use bank 1 and 2 OR 3 and 4 ie banks with the same color to activate dual channel. There is 1T/2T setting in the bios.

 

[dashiki]

is there any advantage using banks 1-2 rather than 3-4?

rocketman you need to put the memory in the same colored slots

 

[xeizo]

banks 3-4 will keep the memory slightly cooler, but on the other hand so does bank 1-2 have shorter traces to the northbridge which could make them go slightly faster. What happens vs those two cases under extreme overclocking is impossible to predict. One has to try it out.

One question for you dashiki, since you seem to have a nice overclock, what revision is your board ? KC or KD(written in the lower left corner of the board) ?

 

[dashiki]

KD, I'd be happier with my overclock if I could get this ddr500 to run at 250mhz

 

[rocketman14]

i did put them in banks 3 and 4. why is it showing single channel in sandra? i also set it to 1t in bios. is sandra showing that i have 2t set?

 

[xeizo]

Strange. Are you using the latest bios ? You can always use a program called "A64 Tweaker" to change the memory setting from Windows instead, if you can't get it to work. Do a Google-search for it, the last version seems to be 0.31.

 

[Dr3thepooner]

Finnaly i found the propper thread..i have this situation here guyes :

Ok , everything form the very beggining
So i got this new mobo(K8Tpro) form soltek and new procc (AMD Athlon64 3200), and put it all together, was working fine..Then i read couple of articles and figured out i could squeeze a lilbit more out of this procc, I was tottaly new to OCing ...so i followed instructions and overclocked with stock cooling up to 2200mhz right away - 10 x 220 fsb, without touching memory or voltage, and it worked perfect i am sure it would go further. BUT then i figured out that my bios wasnt showing right CPU temperature(all the 939 soltek bioses have this temp glich), so i decited to flash it to newer version 1.4....After flasing the bios teperature readings was right , obviosly all the settings were default, so I overclocked my CPU again like last time, Windows loaded up ok , but NOW evey time when i am trying to play any game, it stops responding after 3 - 5 mins of playing or doesnt even load and restarts PC by itslef...starting windows and tellin me that somthing was worng with a graphic driver...If I clock my CPU on stcok everything works fine ..

I am really frustrated here , and i dont feel like flashing bios back, b4 it worked perfectly now i cant even OC by 50mhz....if any1 had expirenced smth like that plz help !

Thx alot.

 

[xeizo]

What PSU do you have ?
Have you cleared the bios after flashing ?

 

[dashiki]

Dr3thepooner, what are your overclock settings? you may need to add a little voltage to keep it stablemine is set at 1.525 and in windows i get a steady current of 1.48v. also what memory are you running often time memory will boot oc'd but fail in windows. Finally if you oc to 220 you need to drop the ldt multiplier to 800 (or 4x) to keep it near the 1ghz that the board was desinged to run at so your oc'd htt wil give you a ldt of 4*220 or 880 making it less than a pro but the difference between 800mhz and 1ghz in that instance is marginal.

HTH

 

[dashiki]

also on the temp issue they fixed the issue in the bios but they do not have a soltek hm that reads it correctly yet. I would not trust sandra or everst temp readings. do you have stock cooling? either way I have heard of people running 3200's up to 2.5ghz on stock heatsink/fan

 

[xeizo]

dashiki, I bought a 7000 AlCu because of price/weight, do you think I should go and change it to a 7000 Cu or a 7700 Cu ?

edit. I changed it to a 7000B-Cu. It was a rather big difference in performance, especially under load, according to tests.

8 days left before I get my 3500+ Winchester, what a pain

 

[dashiki]

well if you can still change it I'd go with the 7700-cu it is a really nice hs/f and performs better than the 7000 in testing. It's not worth upgrading if you own the 7000 but if buying new then get the 7700 more copper = better cooling.

 

[Dr3thepooner]

Thx alot for replies guyes.
Well b4 updating my Bios to version 1.4 , I overclocked my CPU my rasing FSB up to 220 mhz, I never touched anything else, and it worked perfectly in windows and with any graphic apps, for as long as i wanted.
I didnt touch any voltages....or timings

Xeizo, what do you clearing the BIOS oafter flash??? , and my PSU is 420W.

I think somthing is worng with new BIOS, cuz i was able to just raise FSB and it would work , now i cant even OC by 50mhz... and yes i have stock cooling.

And i already mentioned now when i OC it , it runs in windows prefectly for any almont of time, but in any garaphic app it fails my video card, and reboots...so nay ideas how it can affect the video card i even have an error description -

 

[Dr3thepooner]

sry for broken link this should work

[img=[url="http://img196.exs.cx/img196/756/untitled6zu.jpg"]http://img196.exs.cx/img196/756/untitled6zu.jpg[/url]]

 

[xeizo]

The 6800 usually does that thing when it gets to hot, I don't think it has to do with the mobo, downclock the 6800/get better cooling for it/get better airflow in the case - especially under the graphics card. If you still want to clock it, be careful to run 3D Mark 03 and 3D Mark 05 and watch for artefacts, if there's any, downclock. You can also be able to clock higher if you reflash the graphics bios with higher core voltage, but then you will need even more cooling.

To reset the bios, there is a jumper at the bottom of the mobo which you remove for a minute and then put back BUT you have to remove the power cord to the case before you do that and also press the power button a few times to empty the power capacitors. Then reset. It will make 100% sure there's no rest of the old bios in the cmos-circuitry. For exact placement of the jumper, read the manual.

dashiki; I'll keep the 7000B-Cu, I have a tight case so I'm worried about the 7700 will not fit, and according to the tests so was the difference between the two copper models less than over the AlCu-ones.

edit. It can be the Cpu as well, it could be heat because of a misaligned cooler, incorrectly applied paste or jus poor ventilation in the case. BUT what I came to think of is that the vcore undervolts on the K8TPro according to what I've heard. Try raising the vcore to 1.55 and see what happens.

 

[Dr3thepooner]

thx ... ,
My video card was already overclocked when i bought it , and it has 2 huge fans on it , temperature neva goes higher then 56c on full load...so i dont see a problem here.:
but ya ill try resetting the bios ...that might help