|
We'll wrap it up with a
benchmark round from Unreal Tournament 2003. We
utilized a simple benchmark script that does "Fly By" demos
on the Antalus, the Asbestos and the Citadel levels.
We set the resolution to 640X480, so as to take as much of
the workload off the GeForce4 Ti4200 and IGP GeForce4 as
possible and place it on the CPU and System Bandwidth.
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|
Unreal
Tournament 2003 |
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DirectX 8 Gaming
Performance |
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640X480 - 32 Bit Color
640X480 - 32 Bit Color
640X480 - 32 Bit Color
In these tests,
the Soltek manages to jump ahead of all the other nForce2
boards we have tested up to this point. The margin is
fairly small, but the Soltek nForce2 solution shows that it
can keep up with its competitors. Here we see the IGP
struggling a bit, with even the lowest settings. We'd
also like to point out that the IGP comes in right around 60
FPS, which by most standards is still considered playable.
Although most gamers enjoy playing at higher settings,
having a motherboard that gives you everything and still
lets you play some of the latest titles, without even having
an AGP card in the slot, is money well spent.
The nForce2
chipset makes a great pairing for an AMD CPU. With the
many varieties it comes available in and its abundant
feature set, this chipset is hard to beat. Soltek
wanted us to point out that they strive to deliver extremely
stable motherboards with some overclocking potential, but
most of their efforts go to system reliability. We
have to say that we enjoyed working with this board, as it
has proven Soltek's claim to reliability.
Soltek
SL-75MRN-L Analysis:
The Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard was a great board to test.
System reliability was as good as it gets and this board
even showed some room for overclocking. While this
board comes as a very good all-in-one solution, it is
lacking other amenities that a good portion of end users
like to see in today's motherboards. This board does
not offer ATA RAID or SATA RAID, Firewire support, and
serious overclocking potential. Although Soltek makes
no claim that this board is specifically aiming for that
crowd however. If you're in the market for an
all-in-one solution that will keep you from having to open
the case from time to time to figure out what's wrong, then
the Soltek SL-75MRN-L is for you. The great thing about this
board is that it appeals to serious gamers as well since it
offers an AGP 4X/8X compatible slot to upgrade to a more
capable video card. And we must look at what this
board does offer: support for the latest Athlon CPU's, Dual
Channel DDR400, 6 USB 2.0 ports, an on-board IGP, 6-channel
sound, and 5 32-bit PCI expansion slots. While the
Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard may not appeal to everyone, it
certainly happens to be a great pick for the "all-in-one"
niche.
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-
Fast and
stable
-
Good
value
-
AGP 8X
-
Supports
333MHz Athlon chips
-
Onboard
audio is excellent
-
Dual
DDR400 support
-
USB 2.0
-
Great
software bundle
- No SATA support
- IGP not great for
gaming
- Second RJ-45 jack
missing
- No Firewire support
|
| We're giving the
Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard a HotHardware Heat Meter
rating of...
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or any other Hot Hardware Review in the PC Hardware Forum!
|
