Soltek SL-75DRV4 Motherboard Review

What more can I say that hasn't already been shown. I really like the SL-75DRV4, the board has a unique style and plenty of features that allow you complete control of your system and to wrap things up here are my general thoughts.

The KT266A chipset is an excellent performer and the Soltek SL-75DRV4 takes full advantage of that and even brings a few more things to the table. First off we have quite a lot of control over the system settings, granted you don't need to use any of them unless you are overclocking the system but they are very nice to have, they include. AGP and DDR voltages can be set manually. There are manual and bios level settings for processor voltage and front side bus, and multipliers can be set manually if the processor is unlocked. (This is pretty easy to do on T-birds though becomes more difficult with the XP's). DDR memory settings are quite numerous but nothing out of the ordinary, DRAM clock, Timing, CAS length, Bank Interleave, and Command Rate

It would seem that the days of "Redstorm Overclocking" could be drawing to a close when using Athlon XP processors. Here is what I discovered. After activating the "Redstorm Overclocking feature in the bios the computer would increase the FSB one MHz at a time until the system locked up or became unstable. (I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read the notification screen that said "Please Waiting..." instead of "Please Wait..."). Anyhow every time I tried the system would lock up at 152MHz in which case I needed to manually reset the system. On reboot the FSB was set to 148MHz and wouldn't boot past the bios summary screen. The computer would often times post at 152 but once again not make it past the summary screen. I figured the lockups where a cooling issue so I backed the clock speed down and found that 145MHz would render the computer stable enough to boot and run some benchmarks.

So far I haven't said much about ATA133 and the new Southbridge that is really what makes the SL-75DRV4 any different than the 75DRV2. Personally I think ATA133 is a nice addition though without an ATA133 drive to test with I would be making speculation as to how well it actually works. I did notice that my Sandra drive scores increased a couple thousand points over a standard ATA100 controller (you can use this page as a reference http://www.ninjalane.com/display.aspx?docname=fwd-cupa&page=9) so ultimately there is a benefit, as to how much by using an ATA133 drive is still unknown.

So what is the future of the Purple Ray series of motherboards? Well in the immediate future we have the SL-75DRV5, which I believe is due out later this year. The board will be equipped with the new Via KT333 chipset that will give the Athlon DDR333 memory support.

I believe that Soltek will hit big with the Purple Ray series of motherboards and wouldn't hesitate to recommend this board to anyone.

Purple PCB
ATA133
Variety of overclocking and tweaking controls
Active cooling on Northbridge
4x AGP Pro

CNR slot
Strange things with the "Redstorm Overclocking" feature