Review of Soltek SL-86SPE-L Mainboard on i865PE Chipset

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
06/24/2003 | 11:28 AM

We continue reviewing the newest mainboards based on i875P and i865PE chipsets. Today we are going to take a closer look at a mainboard from Soltek. We should say that the solutions offered by this manufacturer have been very rarely reviewed on our site before. The thing is that we were not always happy with the quality of Soltek’s solutions, so we didn’t review them often. But we should confess that our opinion about this manufacturer started changing drastically for the better lately. Soltek changed its marketing strategy radically towards aggressive promotion of its products in the mainboard segment. Besides, they provided their solutions with a number of really exciting features and started paying due attention to reliability issues and adequate technical support.

We would also like to stress that one of the major attractions of Soltek mainboards is their outstanding exterior. All of you remember very well the mainboard family called Golden Flame with gold-sputtered PCBs. Now Soltek thought of a new unusual mainboard family aka Violet Eyes. One of the mainboards from this particular family is going to be the hero of our today’s story. We would like to introduce the new Soltek SL-86SPE-L mainboard based on i865PE chipset.

The first question many progressive users ask when they see an i865PE based mainboard is about the PAT technology support. After a very illustrative demonstration of the potential behind the i865PE based mainboard performed by ASUS and their P4P800 (see our detailed ASUS P4P800 Mainboard Review), almost everyone wants to make sure that they get a solution running faster than any the standard i865PE based one. Running a little bit ahead of time, we would like to say that you can also enable PAT on Soltek SL-86SPE-L, though in a not very usual way. Hungry for exciting details? Then go on reading! :)

Specifications

Besides Soltek SL-86SPE-L, you can also come across one more mainboard from the same family. It is Soltek SL-86SPE, which differs from our today’s hero by the absence of the integrated Ethernet controller. Anyway, the features of Soltek SL-86SPE-L indicate that it is an inexpensive mainboard. At present you can find it for around $105-$110. The modification without the network controller will cost another $5 less.

The package of Soltek SL-86SPE-L includes the following software and equipment:

• CD-disk with the standard set of drivers and utilities;
• Powerful System Utilities CD-disk with the additional software bundle including PC-cillin 2002, VirtualDrive 7, RestoreIT! 3 Lite, PartitionMagic 6.0 SE and DriveImage 4.0.
• Two Serial ATA cables;
• One Parallel ATA cable;
• FDD cable;
• User’s manual.

As we see, the accessories set is minimal. Especially against the background of very rich sets offered by such companies as MSI, Chaintech or Gigabyte. However, we shouldn’t forget about the price of this unit. Soltek SL-86SPE-L is a low-cost product that is why it is not accompanied by too many accessories. Although, I assume that such things as an additional bracket with the USB ports could be included. Hopefully, Soltek will take note of our advice in the future.

Closer Look

Soltek SL-86SPE-L is a pretty simple but at the same time very well-done product, based on i865PE chipset. This chipset is exactly the one that determines most mainboard functions connected with the CPU, memory and basic interfaces support. That is why like many other mainboards based on i865PE aka Springdale-PE, Soltek SL-86SPE-L can work with any Intel processors fitting into Socket478. The mainboard supports 400MHz, 533MHz and 800MHz system bus frequency and can work with processors with or without Hyper-Threading technology. As for the future Prescott processors support, Soltek doesn’t promise anything directly. However, the mainboard meets Intel’s latest FMB2 and VRM10 specifications, which provides a nearly 100% guarantee that Soltek SL-86SPE-L will work at least with the first Prescott based CPU models. Anyway, in the middle of next year Pentium 4 processors will acquire new LGA775 packaging, which will put an end to the compatibility of all today’s mainboards with the newest processors. So, you’d better get ready for that now.

As for work with the memory, Soltek SL-86SPE-L doesn’t boast any specific peculiarities compared with the other mainboards. With the FSB frequency equal to 133MHz, the mainboard allows clocking the memory in DDR266 and DDR333 modes (DDR400 SDRAM is not supported in this case). As soon as the FSB frequency rises up to 200MHz, DDR400 SDRAM can also be used. We would like to point out that in case the FSB frequency is equal to 200MHz, DDR333 memory works at the actual 320MHz to ensure better synchronization.

There are 4 DIMM slots on the mainboard grouped in pairs: two per each memory channel. This way if you want to squeeze the maximum performance out of your Soltek SL-86SPE-L, you’d better install memory modules in pairs, although this is not a must. The mainboard also works absolutely fine in single-channel mode, though the performance in this case is about 10% lower.

As for the expansion slots, there are no surprises here. Soltek SL-86SPE-L features an AGP 8x slot compatible with 1.5V/0.8V graphics cards, and 6 PCI slots. Note that there is no protection against accidental use of old 3.3V graphics cards with Soltek SL-86SPE-L. However, I don’t think you should be very upset about it, as there are hardly any more graphics cards that old left in the today’s market.

As you remember, one of the innovations of i865PE chipset is the special CSA bus with 2Gbit/sec bandwidth implemented in the chipset North Bridge, which is intended for connection of gigabit network controllers. However, Soltek didn’t use this bus. The thing is that the only controller today, which can be connected to the CSA bus, is Intel PRO/1000CT gigabit controller. This is a truly fast solution, but at the same time a very expensive one. Still, the Soltek SL-86SPE-L mainboard is targeted not for advanced users and costs not too much. That is why it would be not very reasonable to use Intel’s CSA controller on it. So, Soltek engineers kept in mind their main target and equipped Soltek SL-86SPE-L with a regular Realtek RTL8100B Ethernet controller connected to the chipset South Bridge via the PCI bus and supporting 10 or 100Mbit/sec network connections.

In fact, this is not the only thing where Soltek tried to save on production costs. Take a look at the South Bridge. The mainboard is equipped with the regular ICH5 South Bridge supporting two ATA/133 channels and two SerialATA-150 channels, but no RAID. This way you can connect up to 6 separate drives to this mainboard (two SerialATA drives and 4 Parallel ATA drives), but you will never be able to build a RAID array with them.

The USB 2.0 ports are also implemented in a very interesting manner on Soltek SL-86SPE-L. Since the rear panel of the mainboard is standard, there are only two USB 2.0 ports on it. The remaining 6 USB 2.0 ports implemented in the ICH5 South Bridge are present only as connectors on the PCB for the additional ports placed either on the front or on the back panel of the PC case. However, there are no additional brackets with the USB 2.0 ports in the box with the mainboard. so, if you use Soltek SL-86SPE-L as is, i.e. without purchasing any extra brackets or panels, there will be only two USB 2.0 ports available. To tell the truth, this is not enough for today. I assume that Soltek should have taken care of it and provided SL-86SPE-L with the rear panel brackets featuring extra USB 2.0 ports or modified the design of the back mainboard panel, so that more USB 2.0 ports could fit in there.

By the way, I would like to note that due to AMI BIOS used in Soltek SL-86SPE-L, this mainboard, just like that one from ASUS (see our ASUS P4P800 Mainboard Review), can recognize such USB drives as flash-drives, external drives, ZIP-drives, card readers and the like as a floppy. It automatically implies that you can access these drives from DOS or any other operation systems, which do not usually support these devices. Besides, this feature also allows booting the operation system from any of these devices without any difficulty.

Six-channel sound support on Soltek SL-86SPE-L is implemented via Realtek ALC650 codec, which is today’s most widely spread solution, which is nevertheless getting more and more obsolete. Anyway, even though the quality of this six-channel sound is not bad at all. SPDIF Outs, however, are not designed on Soltek SL-86SPE-L, probably for economic reasons. Also note that the same Realtek has another, more advanced solution aka ALC655, complying with AC97 2.3 spec and ensuring higher sound quality.

All in all, Soltek SL-86SPE-L doesn’t boast very rich features set. However, it definitely doesn’t determine our verdict about this product. Soltek positions this solution as a relatively inexpensive mainboard for overclockers. Thus, not so long ago Soltek’s marketing departments announced that this mainboard worked stably at 300MHz FSB. But we all know very well that the manufacturers often claim more than they can really implement. So, we are going to check the overclocking friendly options offered by Soltek SL-86SPE-L. But before that, let’s take a closer look at the PCB design.

PCB Design

The first thing that catches your eye when you take Soltek SL-86SPE-L is the PCB color. It is not for nothing that they call it Violet Eyes. SL-86SPE-L is really of dark-violet color. They created this coloring by sputtering the corresponding matt lacquer and using violet slots. Soltek gave up multi-color slots and ATA connectors: everything is violet now. However, it is exactly why Soltek SL-86SPE-L looks very stylish and impressive. The owners of transparent cases should simply love it!

Very unusual exterior is not the only advantage of Soltek SL-86SPE-L design. Since there are not too many additional controllers onboard, all PCB components are located in a very clever and reasonable way. The connectors for Parallel ATA HDDs are in front of the DIMM slots together with the main ATX power supply connector. The 12V ATX connector is placed closer to the back mainboard edge, between the CPU socket and the AGP slot, just like on many other mainboards. As for the FDD connector, it is not in front of the DIMM slots, which is a typical location for it, but is moved to the left edge in front of the PCI slots. On the one hand, this is not the best place for it, because the FDD cable will be disturbing the PCI expansion cards. But on the other hand, this location will allow minimizing the FDD cable length in most cases. Also the SerialATA connectors placed next to the FDD connector may cause some problems for the PCI expansion cards.

We would also like to give special credit to Soltek for placing the connectors for additional USB 2.0 ports in a very convenient location. They are on the left edge, behind the last PCI slot, where they definitely will not be in the way.

However, since there are 6 PCI slots onboard, the AGP slot is too close to DIMM slots, blocking the clips. As you know it will not allow you to do anything with the DIMM modules, before you remove the AGP card from the slot. However, with Soltek SL-86SPE-L you will have this problem only if you use very long-sized graphics cards (larger than ATI RADEON 9700 PRO, for instance), because the DIMM slots of Soltek’s mainboard are moved very far to the front edge.

Although the North Bridge of i865PE chipset can easily do with a passive cooler, Soltek equipped it with a small active cooler. In fact, this solution hardly has any disadvantages. The fan of this cooler rotates at around 3,000rpm creating almost no noise at all. Besides, the fan is equipped with a fan rotation speed sensor, but this parameter is not monitored on Soltek SL-86SPE-L.

The processor voltage regulator of Soltek SL-86SPE-L is based on a three-channel circuit. It uses powerful MOSFETs and big filter capacitors, so we really hope that the CPU receives highly “clean” current. Also the memory slots use impulse voltage regulator. All this indicates that Soltek engineers paid due attention to the stability of their solution under high workloads (with high-frequency processors and four DDR400 memory modules).

Strange as it might seem, but Soltek SL-86SPE-L still uses jumpers. Many manufacturers have already moved all configuration settings to the BIOS Setup, but not Soltek. Besides the Clear CMOS jumper, the mainboard also features a jumper disabling the network controller on the hardware level. And which is even more strange, there are two jumpers setting the processor bus frequency!

These jumpers allow setting the default processor frequency and feature four positions: Auto, 100MHz, 133MHz and 200MHz. Although we were very much surprised to see them onboard, we have to admit that these two jumpers are a great advantage of Soltek SL-86SPE-L. On the one hand, you can disregard them completely by setting them into Auto position. But on the other hand, they allow squeezing extra performance out of the board by enabling the so-called PAT technology.

As we have already discovered in our ASUS P4P800 Mainboard Review, in reality when the processor bus frequency is 800MHz and we use DDR400 SDRAM, the bypass path (non-optimized algorithm) is enabled in i865PE. This path involves additional buffers and slows down the functioning speed. In our case with Soltek SL-86SPE-L we can use the above mentioned jumpers to manually change that bus frequency, which the chipset considers to be the default frequency for the given CPU. In other words, if you use a CPU with 800MHz bus with Soltek SL-86SPE-L and set the jumpers into “Auto” or “200MHz” position, the performance of our system will be slowed down by the enabled bypass path. If we set the jumpers into “133MHz” position and then overclock the FSB to 200MHz by using the overclocking friendly options available in BIOS Setup, the mainboard will use the standard shorter path for addressing the memory. It will actually mean that we enabled PAT technology, because the chipset will think that the nominal FSB frequency set for this CPU is 133MHz.

To prove our statements, let us offer you the results of a few tests. We tested Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor with 200MHz FSB and dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM with 2-2-2-5 timings. We also used ATI RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card. We used different settings to adjust the FSB frequency:

• Jumpers: Auto; FSB frequency in BIOS Setup: Auto.
• Jumpers: 133MHz; FSB frequency in BIOS Setup: 200MHz.

The resulting FSB frequency equaled 200MHz in both cases, but the performance turned out different. Have a look:

The performance increase is evident. And we managed to achieve this by performing the trick described above: enabling PAT on Soltek SL-86SPE-L.

But unfortunately, we have to admit that when the jumpers are set to “133MHz” position and the FSB is overclocked to 200MHz, the mainboard was not so stable, as we hoped it would be. We even failed to run all the benchmarks we wanted. But we are sure that Soltek will cure this problem in the future and the new revisions of the BIOS Setup will allow using PAT technology to the full extent. Especially, since the existing BIOS Setup version has some other problems connected with incorrect memory configuring. We are going to dwell on them later in this article.

BIOS and Overclocking

Soltek SL-86SPE-L uses AMI BIOS microcode. We should say that the BIOS Setup design is very similar to that of ASUS P4P800, which we have recently reviewed. It looks as if AMI found something very attractive for the mainboards manufacturers. Today their BIOS is used in a great number of mainboards for Pentium 4 platform.

Soltek has always paid attention to overclocking friendly options of its mainboards. Soltek SL-86SPE-L is no exception. The Setup is full of various functions for an overclocker to play with. All of them are available in Advanced BIOS Features on a page called Frequency/Voltage Control.

If you remember, Soltek offered automatic Red Storm Overclocking technology in its mainboards. When they started using AMI BIOS, this technology simply disappeared. All parameters involved into overclocking can be adjusted manually. Here is a list of these parameters:

• Adjustable bus frequency with 1MHz increment. The available range depends on the nominal CPU frequency or on the jumpers position (if they are not set to Auto). For CPUs with the nominal 133MHz FSB the maximum is 283MHz. if the nominal FSB frequency of the processor used is set to 200MHz, then BIOS Setup will allow setting the frequency up to 350MHz.
• Fix AGP/PCI Frequency option allows fixing these frequencies at the nominal 66MHz/33MHz during overclocking. Soltek SL-86SPE-L doesn’t allow overclocking the AGP and PCI buses separately.
• Manual processor Vcore adjustment between 1.1V and 1.85V with 0.025V increment. Although the maximum doesn’t strike you as really high, we believe that this is enough for most overclockers: you may hardly need higher CPU Vcore rates. Especially, since contemporary Pentium 4 processors with D1 core stepping overclock pretty well without any Vcore adjustment at all.
• Vdimm adjustment. You can set this parameter to 2.5V, 2.6V, 2.7V and 2.8V.
• Vagp adjustment. You can set this parameter to 1.5V, 1.6V, 1.7V or 1.8V.

As you can see, there is no way to adjust the memory frequency. The thing is that Soltek moved this setting to NorthBridge Configuration page of the Advanced Chipset Features in BIOS Setup. There you will also find all settings dealing with the memory timings.

The available memory frequencies depend on the nominal FSB frequency of the processor, or on the corresponding jumpers position (other than Auto, of course). The table below will show you all of them:

We should point out that even though BIOS Setup sets exact frequencies for DDR266, DDR333 and DDR400, the actual memory frequency for non-standard FSB rates will be determined according to the selected divider (see the table above) and will not correspond to what BIOS Setup indicates.

Besides the memory frequency settings, this section of BIOS Setup also contains memory timings settings. There are also DRAM CAS Latency settings (2, 2.5, 3); DRAM Precharge Delay (5, 6, 7 or 8), DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay and DRAM RAS# Precharge, (2, 3 or 4). All in all, a pretty standard set.

In fact, we still should mention a few issues about the current BIOS version 1.1LB. when we tried to overclock a CPU on Soltek SL-86SPE-L, we discovered that when the memory timings or memory working frequency were set manually, the FSB frequency potential grew much lower. That is why if you want to successfully overclock your CPU to real heights, you should set the memory frequency to Auto, and the memory timings should necessarily be borrowed from SPD. Actually, this is a great drawback of Soltek SL-86SPE-L, which makes the CPU overclocking and performance fine tuning a really hard task. However, we hope that this problem will be eliminated in the new BIOS versions.

When we tested the efficiency of Soltek SL-86SPE-L overclocking friendly features, the above described problem prevented us from achieving really impressive results. When we set the memory frequency and timings manually, the maximum FSB frequency we managed to get during Pentium 4 2.4C overclocking was only 215MHz. To tell the truth, this is a very low result, because the same CPU on ASUS P4P800 reached 275MHz FSB. When we cleared the memory settings back to default, processor overclocking went on much better. In this case the maximum FSB frequency achieved equaled 262MHz. Although the tested processor still had some potential left, this result can be considered very good.

Hardware Health Configuration page on Soltek SL-86SPE-L contains quite a bit of useful info about the system functioning. For example, you can watch the CPU and system temperatures, CPU fan rotation speed, processor and battery Vcore and the PSU voltages (along all lines).

Performance

During our test session we compared the performance of Soltek SL-86SPE-L mainboard with that of the fastest i865PE based mainboard – ASUS P4P800. As you remember, ASUS P4P800 supports HyperPath technology and uses PAT to provide maximum performance. Besides, we also included the results of Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 Pro, which doesn’t use PAT. Note that although Soltek SL-86SPE-L allows enabling PAT, we didn’t enable it during the tests. Unfortunately, Soltek SL-86SPE-L worked very unstably with enabled PAT, so we couldn’t actually take advantage of it.

The testbeds were built with the following hardware components:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU;
• Mainboards: ASUS P4P800 (BIOS version 1.08), Soltek SL-86SPE-L (BIOS version 1.1LB); Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 Pro (BIOS version F6);
• 512MB (2x256MB) DDR400 SDRAM from OCZ (2-2-2-5 timings);
• ATI RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card (Catalyst 3.4 driver);
• Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, 80GB HDD.

The tests were run in MS Windows XP SP1, the mainboards BIOS’s were set to ensure the maximum performance.

The table below contains all benchmarks results obtained:

As we see from the benchmarks results, Soltek SL-86SPE-L performance is on a very good level against the background of those i865PE based mainboards, which could use PAT technology. However, we shouldn’t forget that Soltek SL-86SPE-L allows enabling PAT theoretically, and as soon as they solve the BIOS problems, the performance of this mainboard will grow up significantly. If we look at the first numbers, which we obtained on Soltek SL-86SPE-L with enabled PAT (see our section called PCB Design),w e will see that this mainboard is just a tiny bit behind the today’s leader: ASUS P4P800.

Conclusion

Well, we have just reviewed one more inexpensive mainboard on i865PE chipset - Soltek SL-86SPE-L. This solution pleased us a lot with its stylish design and theoretical opportunity to enable PAT. However, we should admit that the current BIOS version still has a few issues preventing the users from taking advantage of the tremendous potential of this product. Nevertheless, Soltek engineers are most likely to eliminate the above described memory stability problems during overclocking, and then this mainboard will become a very worthy platform for a contemporary system.

Highs:

• Theoretical opportunity to enable PAT technology;
• Good overclocking friendly options;
• Relatively low cost;
• Allows boot-up from USB devices;
• Stylish exterior.

Lows:

• Memory stability problems during overclocking and with enabled PAT;
• Not very rich accessories set;
• Only two USB 2.0 ports actually available in a standard package.