915 Motherboard Roundup: Socket 775 for the Rest of Us

Soltek SL-915GPro-FGR: Overclocking and Stress Testing

FSB Overclocking Results

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Processor:	Pentium 4 Prescott LGA 775 560 ES (2.8GHz-3.6GHz)
CPU Voltage:	1.425V (1.3875V default)
Cooling:	Thermaltake Jungle 502
Power Supply:	OCZ Power Stream 520
Maximum CPU OverClock:	218 x 18 (3996MHz) +9%
Maximum FSB OC:	218FSB x 14 (+9%)

Overclocking on the Soltek was quite an adventure, mainly because Soltek has done nothing to overcome problems created by the Intel design that limit overclocks to about 10%. The 9% overclocks that we achieved were typical of boards which still have lock issues. Above 218, the board's watchdog feature reset the FSB to 200. Clearly, the actual overclocking of the Soltek falls short of the promise of the BIOS options, and Soltek has work to do on the 915GPro-FGR if it is to compete effectively in the $130 price segment.

Memory Stress Test Results:

The Soltek 915GPro-FGR uses DDR memory, so the memory stress test measures the ability of the Soltek to operate at its officially supported memory frequency of DDR400, at the best performing memory timings that OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 will support. Memory stress testing was conducted by running DDR at 400MHz (stock 1:1 ratio) with 2 DIMM slots operating in Dual-Channel mode.

Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs (2/4 DIMMs - 1 Dual-Channel Bank)
Clock Speed:	166MHz
Timing Mode:	3:2 (200:166 - Forced in BIOS)
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	Auto
RAS to CAS Delay:	2
RAS Precharge:	2
Cycle Time (tRAS):	5

The Soltek 915GPro-FGR was completely stable with 2 DIMMs in Dual-Channel at the DDR timings of settings of 2-2-2-5 at 2.5V default voltage. We can only say that we would hope so, since the test results were slower than what we would expect at DDR400. In fact, the board was overriding our setting of DDR400 and setting DDR333 instead. When we asked Soltek what was going on, they told us that the Intel spec for DS DIMMs was 2.5 at DDR400, and that our choice of CAS 2.0 was forcing the board to set DDR333. Our reply to this was, "no other board does this, so why is yours doing this?" Almost 2 weeks later, we still do not have an answer from Soltek as to why the 915GPro-FGR insists on setting DDR333 when we select CAS2 in memory.

Until we get credible answers to questions about Soltek memory timing with 2 DIMMs, any tests with 4 DIMMs are really next to useless. If we get answers to the memory questions and concerns form Soltek in the near future, we will post updated information in this review. For now, we can only warn that the Soltek benchmarks were all run at DDR333 instead of the DDR400, which was used when benchmarking other boards using DDR memory.