Thursday, April 27, 2000

Introduction

While it remains a company that's still a bit wet behind the ears, Soltek hasn't taken its first few years forgranted. Full of energy, and dynamic vigor, Soltek has dared to play head-to-head against the big boys of the motherboard industry, at the cutting edge of technology, even if they can't always be the first to market those technologies. So, that said, Soltek has managed to be the second manufacturer to present us with an Athlon based on VIA's KX-133 chipset - and having been beaten to market only by EPoX, and their own KX-133 board. Alright then, all that aside, let's see what Soltek's SL-77KV has to offer.

The features

Much like the EPoX EP-7KXA, the SL-77KV makes use of the Award BIOS v6.0 to which we've become familiar.

The SL-77KV is expandable via 6 on-board PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, an AMR slot, and an AGP port. The SL-77KV thus possesses one more PCI slot than does the EPoX EP-7KXA. Finally, the board features 3 168-pin DIMM sockets that can support upto 768MB of PC100/PC133, or VC100/133 (Virtual-Channel SDRAM).

Configuration of the SL-77KV is accomplished primarily from the BIOS, as the board itself is nearly jumperless. On the board, asides from the usual jumpers for resetting the BIOS, activating/deactivating the sound-card, select the USB ports, and to activate/deactivate Power Lost Resume, there is a jumper for selecting the processor's frequency (SW1). A function within the BIOS, though, also permits you to adjust this frequency, which makes SW1 less than necessary. The choice of frequencies available through SW1 include: 66MHz, 83MHz, 100MHz, 110MHz, 115MHz, 124MHz, 129MHz, and 133MHz. In the BIOS, under the "Advanced Chipset Features" menu, a function also permits the user to add or subtract 33MHz from the value of the bus frequency, and apply the total value as the memory bus frequency.

The choice of bus frequencies is a bit restrained, though, and a few more choices between 100MHz, and 115MHz - such as 103Mhz, 105Mhz, 107Mhz and 112Mhz - might have been a nice touch.

Do note that there is no option available for adjusting the processor's core voltage. So, if you plan on using this board for any intense Overclocking, it will pretty much be necessary to install a Goldfinger device with this capability.

Next: Additional features