X-bit labs

VIA PT880 Preview: Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL Mainboard in Our Lab (page 5)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 09/09/2003 | 12:14 PM ]

The hero of this preview, the VIA PT880 North Bridge, hides below a golden passive heatsink.

Note that the North Bridge doesn’t practically heat up at work; the passive heatsink is quite enough to cool it. The VIA VT8237 South Bridge works without any cooling at all.

As you see in the snapshot, there is a wire loop near the South Bridge. It means that the design of Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL is not yet finalized and engineers are busy polishing this product off.

Soltek realized all of VT8237’s capabilities, using some companion chips. The chips come from VIA, too, - the company is glad to ship them along with chipsets. The mainboard supports eight USB 2.0 ports. Four of them are wired to the mainboard’s panel, and the other four are made as onboard connectors. Soltek chose VIA’s VT1616 codec for the six-channel AC’97 sound. So, the voice of Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL is the so-called Vinyl Audio. The 10/100 network interface is supported by a PHY-controller from VIA, VT6103. As a result, the back panel of Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL carries three audio jacks, four USB 2.0 ports, one network RJ45 connector, two parallel and one serial port and PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard.

We guess the mainboard will come with a USB 2.0 bracket for the onboard connectors. Note also that Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL features two Serial ATA-150 and two Parallel ATA-133 connectors. Overall, the mainboard can accommodate up to six IDE devices.

Moreover, thanks to the VT8237 South Bridge, the HDDs attached to the mainboards can be united into RAID arrays of level 0, 1 and 0+1. A special multi-purpose utility from VIA called V-RAID helps to keep the array under control. This program is of course included with the mainboard. One note about the RAID realization: the RAID controller in VIA VT8237 is connected to the V-Link bus rather than to PCI. It means the interface bandwidth will not limit the performance of the array.

As the BIOS of Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL is still being worked on, we won’t dwell on the mainboard’s overclocking capabilities. However, there is no doubt they will be available in the finished product. For now, we just say that the PCB has jumpers to manually select the base FSB frequency (100/133/200MHz).

As for the design of the PCB, we cannot call it good. FDD and IDE connectors as well as power connectors are all placed rather unhandy. On the other hand, it seems like Soltek engineers were trying to make up a cheap design and they succeeded in doing this. Even the PCB size is smaller than usual. All such trifles will tell in the end: they drop the price of the solution down.

Overall, Soltek SL-86SPV2-RL is a simple, but well-done product. Thanks to the VIA PT880 chipset, the mainboard offers everything necessary for work. And again, its price is quite decent. Such products have always been in demand.