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Integrated components include a Gigabit Ethernet adaptor, AC'97 audio codec, firewire and a Promise SATA/IDE RAID controller which adds two extra SATA ports and a pair of IDE connectors.
85% Rating: 
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Soltek SL-K890Pro-939 |
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The K8T890 Chipset
VIA's K8T890 chipset is built for the Socket
939 AMD Athlon64/Athlon64 FX processor, and features a 1 GHz HyperTransport
connection (16 bits up / downstream) between the CPU and Northbridge. There are
a total of 20 PCI Express lanes available in the K8T890 too; 16 lanes are set
aside for the graphics card and the four remaining lanes can be split into four
PCI Express x1 slots, or one PCI Express x4 slot for extra high bandwidth
devices.
Connecting the K8T890 Northbridge and VT8237
Southbridge is VIA's Ultra V-Link bus which has a total of 1066MB/s bandwidth.
The VT8237R includes support for Serial ATA with RAID modes 0, 1 and 0+1 when
used in conjunction with a SATAlite controller.
Eight USB 2.0 ports are integrated into the Southbridge as well as
support for up to six 32bit PCI slots. There's a direct connection to the
Southbridge for 10/100 or Gigabit ethernet controllers which mean they do not
have to run through the PCI bus.
 Overclocking the
SL-K890Pro-939
We had quite a bit of
luck overclocking our first VIA K8T890-based motherboard, the Albatron K8X890 ProII, and we were hoping that our luck would continue with the SL-K890Pro-939.
To begin, the first thing we did was lower the CPU
multiplier to 8x and use the 4:3 memory divider; this way neither the processor
or memory would limit the maximum motherboard overclock.
Starting
at 200 MHz we began to slowly raise the
motherboard clock speed. Things actually moved along very well and we didn't
have any problems passing the 250 MHz point. It's nice to see that even early
VIA K8T890 samples are overclocking nicely.
The
maximum motherboard clock speed we achieved was
a very respectable 263 MHz. Anything higher and the SL-K890Pro-939 motherboard would have
problems POSTing. During testing, even when overclocked, the heatsink that cools
the K8T890 was only mildly warm to the touch. It should be pretty clear that
if you're an overclocker you don't have to shy away from a VIA K8T890-based
motherboards!
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