Articles: Mainboards

Soltek SL-KT880E-RL Mainboard on VIA KT880 Chipset Review (page 7) [05/23/2004 01:01 PM | Mainboards]
by Ilya Gavrichenkov

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Performance

	Soltek SL-KT880E-RL (VIA KT880)	ASUS A7V880 (VIA KT880)	ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400)
Business Winstone 2004	20.1	20.2	20.9
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004	24.8	24.9	24.8
3DMark03, Default	6321	6327	6310
3DMark03, Default, CPU score	599	603	615
3DMark2001 SE, Default	17735	17962	18251
Aquamark3, fps	43.62	43.79	43.69
Aquamark3, CPU	8097	8266	8192
Quake3 (four), 1024x768	316.2	321.4	330.6
X2 - The Threat, 1024x768	106.95	106.66	107.86
Unreal Tournament 2004 (dm-rankin), 1024x768	84.67	85.56	86.61
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (paris3), 640x480	139.22	140.82	144.07
Far Cry, 1024x768	57.85	58.61	59.88
Halo, 1024x768	50.94	50.96	51.74
Data Compression, WinRAR 3.3, Best, KB/sec	364	369	392
MPEG-2 Encoding, Mainconcept MPEG Encoder, sec	218.05	218.16	218.31
MPEG-4 Encoding, Xmpeg 5.0/DiVX 5.11, fps	27.67	27.8	27.86
Windows Media Encoder 9, MPEG2 to WME, sec	781	784	778
CINEMA 4D, CINEBENCH 2003, Raytracing, CB	282	281	282
CINEMA 4D, CINEBENCH 2003, Shading, CB	319	319	323
CINEMA 4D, CINEBENCH 2003, Lighting SW, CB	1398	1400	1407
CINEMA 4D, CINEBENCH 2003, Lighting HW, CB	2947	2949	2945
PCMark04	4039	4058	4109
PCMark04, CPU	3835	3840	3859
PCMark04, Memory	2767	2775	2845

The outcome of our tests is predictable. Soltek couldn’t make a faster KT880-based mainboard than ASUS. That’s why the ASUS A7V880 is nearly everywhere a little faster than the new board from Soltek. Of course, the Soltek SL-KT880E-RL is also slower than the nForce2-based product and our words about the nForce2 Ultra 400 being the fastest dual-channel chipset for the Socket A platform are still true. The intelligent DASP preprocessor employed by NVIDIA in the nForce2 family chipsets is a highly efficient thing – you can’t beat that.

Conclusion

We have met another mainboard on the VIA KT880 and can now talk with more knowledge about the consumer qualities of this chipset. We are now perfectly sure that the KT880 is not faster than Socket A chipsets from NVIDIA. Moreover, now that we’re looking forward to mainboards on the nForce2 with new enhanced-functionality and cheaper South Bridges, the problem of the best chipset for the Socket A platform remains urgent. Of course, the KT880 has certain advantages, among which its high stability at overclocking is important, but so far, there are no real overclocker models of KT880-based mainboards in the market. For example, the Soltek SL-KT880E-RL we have reviewed today cannot clock the AGP and PCI busses asynchronously and this becomes a serious obstacle to speeding the system up.

On the other hand, the Soltek SL-KT880E-RL will suit well as an inexpensive Socket A platform for a mainstream computer system. As far as we know, this mainboard is going to sell for about $70 and this price will make it a good buy for economical users as it has every necessary function a modern PC must have. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this product to overclockers and experimenters.

Highs:

Low price for a mainboard with a dual-channel memory subsystem;
Up-to-date capabilities (10/100Mb network, six-channel audio, SATA RAID, eight USB ports);
Support of the CPU-integrated thermal diode.

Lows: