by Anton Shilov
12/01/2003 | 04:25 PM
Soltek today unleashed its new Socket 478 mainboard based on VIA PT880 chipset. The newcomer is able to work with variety of chips, including yet unannounced
The new Soltek SL-PT880PRO-FGR has black PCB with violet slots installed. The mainboard resembles the company’s “Black Thunder” series that is rather popular among enthusiasts. Besides the exclusive color, the SL-PT880PRO-FGR is Soltek’s second product to be based on VIA PT880 core-logic.
The PT880 is VIA’s first chipset to enable dual-channel DDR memory controller – dubbed VIA DualStream64 – a kind of memory controller able to work with two memory modules simultaneously to provide double bandwidth. Besides the advanced DualStream64 technology, VIA’s PT880 offers plethora of must-have capabilities, like 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, Hyper-Threading and AGP 8x. VIA Technologies suggests using VT8237 I/O controller with the PT880 North Bridge to provide up to 6 PCI slots, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 controller, Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support, 6-channel audio-solution, MC97 Modem and other important input/output means.
Soltek’s SL-PT880Pro-FGR mainboard adopting VIA PT880 + VT8237 core-logic boasts with Pentium 4 processor with SSE3 technology support, features 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2100/PC2700/3200 memory (dual-channel memory bus support: memory modules used should be identical and installed in pairs), an AGP 8x slot, 5 PCI slots, 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133, 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support, additional Promise controller bringing 2 extra Serial ATA-150 ports and an ATA-33/66/100/133 channel. The mainboard is equipped with Gigabit Ethernet controller for Enterprise class connectivity, offers 6-channel AC'97 audio, up to 8 USB 2.0 as well as 2 FireWire ports. Additionally, the product brings some features for overclockers and tweakers.
In early September 2003 we had an opportunity to benchmark Soltek’s SL-86SPV2-RL mainboard also based on VIA PT880 core-logic. The product did not show absolutely impressive results, but promised to provide the nice price/performance ratio.