Soltek 75KV KT133 Motherboard
Review
Plagued by numerous problems in the recent past,
Intel now sees itself in a very difficult position. Quite a contrast from the
days before the existance of the Athlon. Since the Athlon's conception, AMD has
been moving forward at full speed and minimal hindrance many thanks to the
vast pool of chipset and motherboard support.
In the past couple of years
we have seen chip makers drastically change their processor interfaces and
mainboard manufacturers have been forced to quickly adapt to ever changing
standards. For them, "changing colours" is a vital part of staying in business.
The Socket A (or Socket 462) platform came into existance after AMD introduced
their Duron and "Thunderbird" (Socket A type Athlon) were
introduced.
Soltek subsequently released their
first Socket A entrant into the motherboard market, the Soltek SL 75KV. We have
had the pleasure of reviewing 2 of their earlier motherboards in the past (the
SL 67KV and SL 77KV) and had found them to be among the best
that we have ever seen. Naturally, we wanted to dig deeper into the Soltek
product line and see how well their SL 75KV stands up on its own merit. Did we
find this board to be as well engineered as their previous generation products?
Read on to find out more...
Features and
Specifications
Support for Socket A Duron and Athlon CPU's
Based upon the
VIA Apollo Pro KT133 chipset
200MHz (DDR) FSB support
Support for AGP
4X and AGP Pro
3 x 168 pin 3.3V DIMM sockets
2 x PCI Bus Master
UATA 33/66 IDE ports (up to 4 ATAPI Devices)
5 PCI / 1 ISA / 1 AGP Pro
slot(s)
ATX Form Factor (220mm x 305mm)
2 + 2 USB ports
Support
for Vcore adjustments in BIOS
Integrated AC97 Audio CODEC
Hardware
Monitoring
What's Included
As with previous
Soltek samples that we have received, the packaging of the SL 75KV motherboard
is of top quality. A sturdy outer box houses a supportive inner layer which
provides extra protection during shipping. Included with the motherboard is a
wonderful software package that consists of 3 Symantec software titles.
These being WinFax, Norton AntiVirus 2000, Norton Ghost and
VirtualDrive 5
.
This is certainly the best software bundle I have ever
seen included with a motherboard till date, with the previous best being Soltek
itself. What's more is that the entire software bundle is documented into a
single manual which introduces the respective application and leads the user
through installation and usage.
Also included with the SL 75KV are
HDD/FDD cables, a thermal sensor, 1 COM port header as well as 2 additional USB
headers (for the rear panel) to bring the total number of USB ports to 4. This
is certainly a benefit to those who require more than 2 USB ports and do not
want to spend any additional money on a USB hub.
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