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

[bookman]

number 500 - woooooohoooooo!

 

[dashiki]

wow 500 posts in this topic and I wasted time reading everyone of them

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Dashiki,
I am sorry for this misunderstanding. Actually W1.4 fixes the temperature issue for BIOS not Soltek HM. Our software engineer is revising the HM to get it working witb BIOS W1.4 on the M/B.

Rocketman14,
We are trying to download "SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2005.SR1" to test again.
By the way, why did you say that "only one of the usb controllers are 2.0 and the rest are 1.1"? They should all work with "USB 2.0" speed if you have applied "Service Pack 1" or above to Win XP.

Punkitup
Yes, "-5V" reading has been removed from the BIOS W1.4.

Thanks and regards,

 

[rocketman14]

i went to mainboard information under information modules: for usb controllers 1-4 it says usb 1.1 controller and for usb controller 5 it says usb 2.0 controller. maybe sandra isn't reporting the right thing so i'll take your word for it. thanks for all your help.

 

[Brian48]

Just FYI. After reading this post, I went a head and ordered a SL-K8TPro-939 + 3500+ Winchester. This would be my second Soltek board.

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Thank you very much for your support, Brian48.
Hope you will enjoy it.

Best regards,

 

[MTSteel]

Hello Lydia,

I have a quick question about bad caps on Soltek boards.
I have a SL 75DRV2 with 10 bad 2200uF capacitors. Any chance I could get some, or the board is simply too old, and I should hunt them down at an electronic store?

Thank You for your help.

 

[X2C]

Originally posted by: Brian48
Just FYI. After reading this post, I went a head and ordered a SL-K8TPro-939 + 3500+ Winchester. This would be my second Soltek board.

I just ordered the same CPU sure hope I have better luck with this one hehe

 

[xeizo]

My Winchester seems to work just fine, haven't done any clocking to speak of yet, at least it is very stable at 2.4GHz when the graphics card is clocked at it's max. And according to ClockGen it looks like the agp/pci-lock is working.

BUT, I have one problem: I flashed to the 1.4 bios but I still can't get the board to boot in dual-channel even att 166MHz mem-bus. Is this a compability problem with my RAM ? Or did I do something wrong when I flashed ? I used the /sn/py/cc-parameters but I noticed that the first block of the bios wasn't overwritten according to awdflash 8.24F. Should I use an extra parameter to overwrite that block too, and could that improve the no-boot at dual-channel issue ?(it hangs at C1). Or do I need to do a bios-reset after flashing, could that improve things ?

In fact, the only way I can boot with two sticks is in slot 1+3 and only at auto-timings in bios.

Other than that, I see no other solution than to buy new RAM unless there is something I have missed ? In that case, is ie Kingston HyperX ok with this board ?

 

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi MTSteelm,
Could you please inform me where you live now and when you purchased the SL-75DRV2?

Xeizo,
Have you tried raising the "DIMM Voltage"?

Thanks and regards,

 

[xeizo]

Yes, I tried raising DIMM to a full 2.8V (i used 2.85V on my older board), the RAMs default is 2.65 and that is what is set in "auto" and it is also the only option that boots in single channel w two sticks. With one stick there is NO problem to boot with many different settings and at 200MHz .

But I'm starting to belive in clearing the cmos after flash, since I saw another thread at PC Perspective where several people had the C1-error after bios-flash. I will try that when I get home ..

edit. which two slots are preferrable when they DO work, 1+2 or 3+4 ?

regards,

edit2. Ok, so I went out for lunch and bought me two sticks of Kingston HyperX PC500/2.6V, I hope that and a cmos-reset does it.

edit3. memory is science, so I read up on the Kingstons in reviews and found out that they aboslutely hit the wall at 252MHz and that they have problems running in dual channel on certain motherboards; not worth testing them I guess, so I called the shop and asked if I could change them to 2x512MB of A-Data Vitesta PC600 instead. They will be in the shop on Tuesday, so I have to get by over the weekend ...

 

[MTSteel]

I live in Kitchener Ontario Canada and bought the board in January of 2002 I know that is some time ago, but couldnt hurt to ask.

Thx again
Mike

 

[dashiki]

I had purchased 2 ddr500 Hyper-X sticks from kingston and had an issue with them working over 225mhz I recieved an email saying they do not support Soltek motherboards just thought everyone here should know.

 

[xeizo]

Thank you very much, Dashiki, it confirms my fingertip precision in returning the Kingstons

I'm very much excited about my incoming A-Data Vitesta PC4800 though, they feature both Brain Power-PCB and Samsung TCCD-chips and do in fact reach over 300MHz in reviews, still does benchmarks at 295MHz ! Also, they seem to function perfectly in 2-2-2-10 at lower frequencies and reportedly seem to have no issues with dual sticks or dual channel - how can I sleep until Monday, right now I'm running my RAM single channel att a lame 172MHz !

 

[dashiki]

xeizo: how much was the ram?

 

[X2C]

Well I had to get another 3500+ because there was nothing else around anywhere
Turned out to be another damn NewCastle and the clocks are just the same, BAD
Going to try again next week to see if I can buy another CPU (grrrrrr)

 

[xeizo]

The A-Data costed 2700Sv.Kr. for both, that would normally be around 300$. But right now the US-dollar is extremely low at about only 7Sv.Kr for a dollar, which means a direct currency-conversion seems more expensive than it is, namely ca 380$. Anyway, I guess they're worth it.

Resetting the bios didn't help the dual-channel issue with my current memory, I even have problem running two sticks in single channel - when bios is correctly tweaked(from one stick) they run stable but slow in single channel, if I change just one thing in the bios they won't even boot at all at 166. A single stick always boots, but can't run stable at 200MHz. Extremely worthless crap. I might need a better power-supply though, my 12V might not be up to it but I can't really tell until I get some good memory to check things out..

X2C, why don't you just ask for "3500BI" when you order, as they're always Winchester.

 

[CharlesMcKinney]

Just FYI, I purchased this board along with a 3000+, and I'm loving it so far. My only gripe is that I have to run it at stock, because I'm too afraid to OC without an accurate temperature reading. Just wondering when we'll see a Soltek HM fix, so I can OC the hell out of my Whinny?

 

[xeizo]

The new SiSoft Sandra 2005 and the new Speedfan 4.21 both seem to show the right cpu-temperature. I'm currently at 42C running my Winchester 3500+@2420MHz during normal work and Cool 'n Quiet deactivated. I've set 1.45 Vcore in the bios.

edit. Oh, and Speedfan is able to run in the tray showing temps at mouse-over.

 

[dashiki]

currently running at stock besause of the temp issue also here are my findings with various temp reading programs:

stock k8t939-pro 3200+ winchester @ 2.0ghz, Zalman 7700-cu fan 100%, 6 case fans all 100%

Sisoft Sandra 2005: idle board 25c cpu 20c
100% board 26c cpu 22c

Speed fan 4.21: idle board 25c cpu 42c
100% board 22c cpu 53c

Everest home: idle board 20c cpu 40c
100% board 22c cpu 53c

Soltek HM: idle board 19c cpu 47c
100% board 20c cpu 57c

so as you can see depending on your monitoring software you get different answers not sure which to believe? neither am I.

I am most disappointed about the Soltek HM as it is engineered by Soltek and was released as a working copy that obviously is not in working condition.

 

[xeizo]

I would guess that SpeedFan shows the most accurate cpu-temp of those programs. Btw, I get the same reading in Sandra when i use "Environment Monitor", it draws a graph and it seem to match SpeedFan well. I don't know where you got your numbers from ? HM don't work at all for me, it just fluctuates, I believe it is actually reading the aux-temp. Why ? I don't know. The programmer should know ...

Seems a little hard to have to clock the board till it freezes, just to find out ehmm when it freezes, that's why we have temp-sensors to avoid uneccesary crashes we don't provoce by ourselves when we overclock to much. And the case gets dusty inside after some time which drive the temps up, it is nice to be warned when to clean the computer inside before something crashes from heat. It could be important work unsaved.

btw, my box is completely stable at 2475MHz at the moment, I won't clock any higher until I get my new memory. I never got the old memory to work in dual channel, reflashed several times using all the most powerful commands to rewrite bios-bootsector, clear dmi-pool etc, cleared cmos etc no-go then it stopped working with two sticks in single-channel, I tried the sticks one after one and it looks like one of them is dead. Strange though, the remaining one is only able to boot in slot 1 - where it functions perfectly once up and running - but shouldn't it be possible to boot from one of the other slots as well ?

 

[xeizo]

-- erased --

 

[dashiki]

personally I wouldn't trust any of them they are all wrong.

 

[xeizo]

Not trust, but Speedfan seems like the least bad compromise at the moment .. if it starts going up near 50 in Windows I'll be warned. Gaming is another issue, if it don't crashes it aint too hot

 

[dklingen]

Can anyone tell me if the 1T works for the RAM as of the last bios update?

THX