Although NVIDIA’s nForce2 core-logic is not yet widely adopted on the market and is not a very cheap solution at all, a lot of customers express great interest in nForce2, especially those, who plan to purchase AMD Athlon XP processors with 333MHz FSB, because, as our benchmarks revealed in our contemporary Socket A chipsets comparison (see the whole article here), the nForce2 powered mainboards can offer substantial performance improvement when the 333MHz system bus is used compared to VIA KT400 powered solutions. Therefore, those mainboard manufacturers, who sell their products mostly to enthusiasts and advanced users, now also try to offer the nForce2 based products to their customers.

Soltek Computer has announced two new Socket A mainboard based on the nForce2 SPP chipset: SL-75FRN and 75FRN-R. Here are the specifications:

• Supports Socket A Athlon XP processors with 100/133/166MHz FSB;
• NVIDIA nForce2 SPP chipset, including MCP I/O controller;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or even DDR400 memory; Note that for dual-channel configurations you have to install just a pair of identical memory modules;
• 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-133/100/66/33 integrated controller;
• For 75FRN-R only: Serial ATA-150/ATA-133 RAID controller from Promise, supporting two Serial ATA ports and one ATA-133 port;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 6-channel AC’97 audio solution;
• Overclocking functions, including Vcore, Vmem and Vagp adjusting, FSB Setting and Multiplier Setting;
• ATX Form Factor.

Soltek’s offerings are not very feature-rich, there are no IEEE1394 ports, no Ethernet and no advanced audio controllers from NVIDIA with Dolby Digital support.

The information about availability timeframe and pricing was not unveiled.