Soltek SL-75DRV?

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NaughtyusMaximus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I've seen a few reviews of the SOLTEK SL-75DRV on other sites on the net. So far its had a warm welcome, but none of the reviews have been too extensive. Does anybody know anything about this motherboard that might be useful to me as a potential buyer?

I DO want to overclock, and stability is a must. I don't mind the fact that it is a VIA chipset.
 
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chainbolt

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2000
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ok, I was also considering this board. The board is sold in Asia (Japan) since around 2 months. In the Japanese forums, peeps are positive about this. There is no issue whatover reported. It goes high in FSB, the bandwidth is reported to be better than AMD 760 boards, stability is reported to be fine. It's also by far the cheapest DDR board you can get, at least here. Solkek is frequently tweaking the BIOS. The BIOS built-in "Redstorm" tweaking function is interesting, but any experienced tweaker can do it better by hand. The KT266 has the advantage that you can tweak the memory (1-way interleaving) a bit better than at AMD 760 boards.

The board is not available with RAID.
 
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NaughtyusMaximus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Ya, its by far the cheapest DDR motherboard available here as well (Vancouver, Canada), and appears to have all the features of the competition, which is why I'm interested in it.

:) Thank you for the info you provided!
 
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damocles

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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It's the cheapest here too (NZ) and i have seen a few good reviews (www.amd3d.com is one). However it's a Via chipset and that makes me wary of being an early adopter
 
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chainbolt

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2000
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<< Here is the email address for purchasing this board in the US. Tom with Soltek distribution I would like to hear a lot more comments about this board. It could be a real jewel... >>



as I said, the board is on sales here since around 2 months, and there are only positive reports, it seems the board is particular in memory/bandwidth scoring very high.
 
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bevo

Senior member
May 21, 2000
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chainbolt, or whichever one of your multiple personalities is present... the US distributor has only received 1 shipment of these boards, and is now waiting on another. It has not been around 2 months and besides a source written in Finnish, there has been very little feedback as to the pefromance and stability of the actual board being shipped. The reference board has been reviewed only a couple of times...
 
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chainbolt

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2000
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<< chainbolt, or whichever one of your multiple personalities is present... the US distributor has only received 1 shipment of these boards, and is now waiting on another. It has not been around 2 months and besides a source written in Finnish, there has been very little feedback as to the pefromance and stability of the actual board being shipped. The reference board has been reviewed only a couple of times... >>



The board is on sales over-the-counter since beginning of April, as you can see here:

http://www.mscom.or.jp/~com1/main.html
http://www.gaz.co.jp/p_m_8.html
http://www.fanatic.co.jp/parts/mb.cgi

The board is available in large quantities. I check this physically every weekend. Not all, but most of the big vendors offer this Soltek over the counter. It's all a matter how fast the local subsidiaries are moving. I think Soltek is a small manufacturer and also not very popluar in USA, and obviously they put more supply in other markets first. And anyway such hardware stuff comes almost all from Taiwan or Japan, so you often have a leadtime of up to 2 months until you have the latest is in your hands in US. Was the same with the GF3. Or take the new Giga 7DXR: it's on retail sales (over-the-counter) since 4 weeks in Tokyo. But it seems it has not yet arrived in USA or the EU.

As I said, I check the Japanese forums, chats, sites etc, there are only positive reports about this board. I remember at least one other review in English, not sure though.

If you want, I can give you several links to on-line sales in Japan. The latest price is around 16,800 Yen, that is around 125~130 USD. Should be cheaper in USA. And here is the link to another review in English, I think it's the actual retail board:

http://www.amd3d.com/review/sl75drv/index.htm#intro

oops, I just see, they reduced the price: it's now 14,800, that makes it 115 USD.

:)
 
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damocles

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,105
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i have been in contact with Tina Lin at Soltek before. They are a great company from a communcations point of view, always responding within 24hours (unlike my experiences with Abit).

According to her their office in the US was closed for one and a half years and they acknowledge that they have a weak presence in the US. They are currently working on their distribution channels and will at a later date be looking at getting reviews performed through Anandtech and Tom's

Outside of the US they are pretty well known. I would put their products at least on par with Abit for quality (yes, i know this isn't the greatest rep). I have seen some problems with faulty ram spacers etc, but nothing major and their boards are dammed cheap. here the DRV is considerably cheaper than the Asus A7133.

Currently i am about 1 more good review away from buying this board (although i'm one review away from buying about 6 boards and, perhaps strangely, the DFI AK76 SN is winning)

 
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chainbolt

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2000
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<< Do you have the URL of some of these forums? >>



Ok this is one example: http://homepage1.nifty.com/masaru_oba/Athlonnews_001.htm.

Go the early May messages, you will find a report by Mr. T. about a benchmarking of the recent KT266 and AMD 760 boards. I guess you don't understand Japanese, so let me translate the main story line:

Mr. T tested the Soltek 75DRV, the FIC AD-11, the A7M266 and the MSI KT266 with Super PI bench marking software (that is the standard bench in the Japanese oc clubs, makes everything comparable).The result is as follows: (shorter is better). The exact memory settings are quoted

Asus A7M266 1:38 muinutes
Soltek 75DRV 1:40 minutes
FIC AD 1:41 minutes
MSI KT266 1:43minutes

Mr. T recommends the Soltek as one of the best performing and most stable KT266 boards.

Another very good source to check out the Japanese scenery is marc's homepage.
http://www.valley.ne.jp/~marc/index.htm

These guys are maniacs about overclocking, most of them use LN. Maku is kindly sending me always his latest temp records, I think he is now down to something like - 60C core temp!
 
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chainbolt

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2000
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... but they real like the Soltek, that boards seems to be ok. It looks like it's even sold us now.:)
 
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NaughtyusMaximus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,220
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Ya, I saw that review. It looks good and all - but just doesn't go into enough detail to really tell me everything I want to know about the board (particularly stability).
 
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sitka

Senior member
Dec 29, 2000
895
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yea, I posted the link before I read it. Pretty brief. I have a Soltek KT133 board. I bought it right out of the gate last year because it was the first available with the B southbridge, and still had an ISA slot. It rocks, real predictable when tweaking. Unfortunately totaly different board but may speak of quality. NCIX could probably get it to ya in two days. HAHA. How's there Satisfaction Gaurantee?
 
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NaughtyusMaximus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,220
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I've no clue what their guarantee is - I'm about to find out. :)
I'll either be buying from them or driving down to Anitec to pick up everything (counting of course on their being able to order in that motherboard).

The most important thing to me is stability, with overclocking abilities coming second. As far as I can tell, this board offers both - but I might as well test it out myself and report to the rest of you.
 
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