Unofficial Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR thread

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
hey dude, DFI boards are awesome, but you are right.. the LAN party series is kinda retarded... I just buy the infinity series like the NF2 line

they just WORK.... very stable, and reliable... I have been a fan of DFI for a little while now.

Thanks Craig, I trust your judgment on mainboards so DFi will definitely be getting some of my future biz

 

[Mem]

Thanks Craig, I trust your judgment on mainboards so DFi will definitely be getting some of my future biz

I can vouch for the DFI NF2 Infinity Ultra board ,the board is awesome on stability,price and features,I`ve yet to have any kind of problem with mine.

DFI are building a good name among the overclocking community,as to their NF3 boards, well I expect same kind of standard .

 

[Ertaz]

Well Its official: "I'm just not scared anymore."

I got a wild hare and decided to see if this thing would post at 230FSB. Low and behold it did. Temps are the exact same as the were for stock voltage (50C) . I will verify the stability with prime 95 overnight. I hopefully will see how 2.53 ghz does in D3 tommorow when I add a 6800gt to the mix. I wish I had become a member of this board earlier, lots of friendly help here.

Update:
Prime crashed about 2 minutes in. I rebooted and upped the vcore to 1.55 and now all seems well.

**DP if you find out anything from Soltek about an overclockers bios please let me know.

 

[creedamd]

I will be watching this thread, I had a Msi Neo Platinum and hated it, bought this board and had no problems. Very stable, easy to setup, and fast. 3200A64 and 6800gt is kicking ass, no overclocking and I'm pulling 11,600 on 3dmark03. 62.20 beta drivers and lastest nforce from nvidia.com.

Far cry is awesome.
Doom3 coming today.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: creedamd
I will be watching this thread, I had a Msi Neo Platinum and hated it, bought this board and had no problems. Very stable, easy to setup, and fast. 3200A64 and 6800gt is kicking ass, no overclocking and I'm pulling 11,600 on 3dmark03. 62.20 beta drivers and lastest nforce from nvidia.com.

Far cry is awesome.
Doom3 coming today.

Nice... I have a 3200+ A64 and will be running the Soltek board with my 9800 Pro til I upgrade the videocard later on.. hoping it's going to kick ass as usual (Soltek board) but I am sure there wont be a problem, I've never been let down by them before!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm awaiting a response from tech support concerning the existance of a power user's/egineering sample BIOS with higher CPU voltage adjustments. It wouldn't hurt if some of you e-mail a similar request to support@soltek.com.tw

 

[creedamd]

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=35-110-103&depa=0

I can confirm that this works for the Northbridge, you can use the same pins that are on the board stock holding the stock heatsink!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

They sent me the power user's bios that has HTT adjustment from 200-300 available, but they said that 1.55v was a hardware limit with the board so no higher settings

 

[imported_orionbg]

Am I wrong or is the Athlon 64 3200+ working at 2GHz? So 10x220 can't equals to 2.42GHz!!!!!!!!
Dont forget that the CPU runs at internal clock of 200MHz that is multiplied by 8x; 9x; 10x; and so on!
With 220MHz HTT(4x) you will get 2200MHz and not 2420MHz!! Can you explain how you did this inposible thing?!?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: orionbg
Am I wrong or is the Athlon 64 3200+ working at 2GHz? So 10x220 can't equals to 2.42GHz!!!!!!!!
Dont forget that the CPU runs at internal clock of 200MHz that is multiplied by 8x; 9x; 10x; and so on!
With 220MHz HTT(4x) you will get 2200MHz and not 2420MHz!! Can you explain how you did this inposible thing?!?

He has the Newcastle core with 512k cache which is default clocked@2.2ghz 11x220mhz=2420mhz.

BTW, welcome to the forums, and that's a nice boxen you have there

 

[LocutusX]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
They sent me the power user's bios that has HTT adjustment from 200-300 available, but they said that 1.55v was a hardware limit with the board so no higher settings

How much Vcore is typically needed for heavy A64 overclocking?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: LocutusX

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
They sent me the power user's bios that has HTT adjustment from 200-300 available, but they said that 1.55v was a hardware limit with the board so no higher settings

How much Vcore is typically needed for heavy A64 overclocking?

My old C0 3000+ needs 1.65v to run 2.4ghz stable. I suppose with a newer CPU like the OP has I could still get a happy overclock but I can't justify a new CPU right now, but $100 for a new 250GB board I can stomach. Hopefully DFI will have an infinity model or such around that price so I can get in at the pricepoint I desire and get the voltages and chipset I want too.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: LocutusX

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
They sent me the power user's bios that has HTT adjustment from 200-300 available, but they said that 1.55v was a hardware limit with the board so no higher settings

How much Vcore is typically needed for heavy A64 overclocking?

My old C0 3000+ needs 1.65v to run 2.4ghz stable. I suppose with a newer CPU like the OP has I could still get a happy overclock but I can't justify a new CPU right now, but $100 for a new 250GB board I can stomach. Hopefully DFI will have an infinity model or such around that price so I can get in at the pricepoint I desire and get the voltages and chipset I want too.

oh c'mon, just get the Soltek
I'd get the DFI right now for sure if one was out... I like DFI a lot.. I still haven't had one for use in my own personal system yet.. but now that I have the K8AN2E-GR I won't be looking for at least a little while longer.. LOL

 

[Ertaz]

Update. -

Well it looks like the ram is severely limiting my OC. I think if I had some PC4000 I could be running ~2500 without any issues. Oh well, thats for another upgrade a long while from now. This thing is very stable though. In another year or so I will try intel/ATI's latest. That will be around the time when PCI Express is starting to show it's muscle.


**By the way a 6800 gt doesn't work very well when its passively cooled . The fan plug was loose on mine. It took me a couple of hours to find it because I thought it was a driver issue. I appear to have been saved by the on-chip thermal shutdown control.**

 

[DAPUNISHER]

No way Craig! 1.7v is my minimum top Vcore criteria. Soltek rocks, but I'd have to swap CPUs to nake this worthwhile. I will hold out for the DFI.

Originally posted by: Ertaz
Update. -

Well it looks like the ram is severely limiting my OC. I think if I had some PC4000 I could be running ~2500 without any issues. Oh well, thats for another upgrade a long while from now. This thing is very stable though. In another year or so I will try intel/ATI's latest. That will be around the time when PCI Express is starting to show it's muscle.


**By the way a 6800 gt doesn't work very well when its passively cooled . The fan plug was loose on mine. It took me a couple of hours to find it because I thought it was a driver issue. I appear to have been saved by the on-chip thermal shutdown control.**

:shocked: scary chit mang! As to the ram holding you back, did you try lowering the default speed compared to LDT? Higher Clockspeed should result in a better performance than the extra bandwidth. I saw benchies of 200HTT 400DDR vs 250HTT 500DDR same clock speed in 3Dmock2k1 and the difference was 2%. That's within the margin of error. The A64 scales well with clockspeed though, so if you can get another 100mhz+ stable by lowering the ram speed I'd go that route. At least bench both ways before settling on what you have now.

 

[Zebo]

Dp if you want me to host the bios email it up to me.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Zebo
Dp if you want me to host the bios email it up to me.

Fusetalk has your e-mail in your profile FUBARed so I'll need it. Thanks for hosting brudda <Ren Hoek> You're one of the good ones man!</>

 

[Zebo]

Just delete the "REMOVE" part.. All emails are like this to prevent bots from spamming us

 

[Zebo]

Ok Here is the performance BIOS from soltek thanks to Dapunisher.



awd-how to update.txt

awdflash.zip

K8AN2_F.zip

 

[CraigRT]

There IS a performance BIOS? sweeeeeet

I just got my K8AN2E-GR in the mail today... wicked! it actually looks like a sweet mobo! not as tacky looking as in the pics.. the PCB is black, not purpleish as the pics make it look.
too bad the store JUST shipped my A64 today... :thumbsdown:

I will FOR SURE try that performance BIOS !!!

 

[imported_orionbg]

Yes it is a beauty but some minor problems are bothering me!
I'll open another topic for them!
I thought that only 3000+ is in two kinds but I've obviosly made a mistake! So the Soltek mobo is not so good for OC with this 1,55V Vcore?!? I'll test them soon as we are distributor of Soltek in Bulgaria and the K8AN2E-GR will be arriving next week! I'm going to tear it apart to see what can it do!!!:evil:

Excuse my BADE English!

 

[CraigRT]

Got my A64 in tonight, swapped the SL-75FRN2-L and XP2500+ out for my A64 3200+ and SL-K8AN2E-GR... no need to do anything else cause that is all that was changed. booted up windows, detected everything, one reboot later everything was working, didn't touch drivers or anything.. :thumbsup:

computer is fast and so far hasn't given me a problem.. played some Doom3, and UT2K4. Doom3 actually runs a little better even though my card is only a 9800 Pro.

Will post more findings as I go.. just wanted to get this out there... so far, happy with this board!!

 

[LocutusX]

eh? you didn't even re-install Windows after the CPU change? i'd think that going from a K7 to K8, a Windows reinstall would be a good idea...

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: LocutusX
eh? you didn't even re-install Windows after the CPU change? i'd think that going from a K7 to K8, a Windows reinstall would be a good idea...

No, every last thing was detected on one reboot.. thing works flawlessly. I always try first, and if it gives me problems, I reformat.. no problems whatsoever.

 

[krose]

Anyone try the power BIOS? With original BIOS I was running at 240x10. When I set FSB to 240 in power BIOS it showed 242 in CPU-Z. I couldn't get any FSB above 250 to work. At POST it would default back to 200. Flashed back to original BIOS.