Dear LydiAtSoltek TW our resident rep.

[12bass]

Hey Marty,

There should be no problem booting up with the Venice. I believe BIOS W1.5 enables Cool'n'Quiet on the new revision, but is not necessary to boot.

My board came with 1.3 or 1.4 and worked fine with my Venice 3200+ right out of the box.

[alex666]

Thanks Kevin. You know, I've been all over the map re. an upgrade to a64, and the more I read, the more I'm looking to get the K8T Pro-939. I've ruled out pci-e for now, and I want to go 939 venice. So that leaves the K8T800 and nf3 chipsets basically, and the K8T800 seems to hold its own with nf3 as best as I can tell, perhaps not overclocking quite as high, but still overclocking to 250 - 260 with good memory. Which is fine by me, as it seems to run stable at that speed as best as I can tell, at least the K8T pro if the posts are correct. And that's what I want, that sweet spot of speed and stability. Plus, I like the feature set, the Soltek quality, and it seems like the temp, memory, and agp-pci lock issues have been resolved. I'll be using the components from my alby 18D Pro on this board. If I had the cash, I'd order right now. But as soon as possible.

marty

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Alex666,
As Kevin stated, the SL-K8TPro-939 does support Venice with the latest BIOS W1.5.

Thanks and regards,

[12bass]

You know, I've been all over the map re. an upgrade to a64, and the more I read, the more I'm looking to get the K8T Pro-939. I've ruled out pci-e for now, and I want to go 939 venice. So that leaves the K8T800 and nf3 chipsets basically, and the K8T800 seems to hold its own with nf3 as best as I can tell, perhaps not overclocking quite as high, but still overclocking to 250 - 260 with good memory.

Hi Marty,

I went through a similar decision making process. For now, I think that the K8TPro-939 is the best solution. I bought an ATI Radeon 9800Pro last September, and intend to stay AGP for a while, as I'm not in need of the latest and greatest video card.

The K8TPro-939 has an excellent feature set, and is a good performer. The Soltek is good for moderate overclocking. It may not hit the high HTT speeds that the nF3 boards do, but that doesn't matter much to me. Except for the extreme HTT speeds, the VIA chipset performs just as well or better than nF3. If you are looking for extreme overclocking board, you probably want a DFI, like the LANPARTY UT nF3 ULTRA-D.

I'm able to clock my Venice 3200+ up to 2.6GHz (260x10) with no problem, and I haven't tried any higher. My Samsung TCCC RAM only runs up to 230MHz, so I have to use a divider, but with A64, the real world loss in performance from using a divider is not that significant.

[alex666]

Hi Lydia. Got the k8t-pro-939, will assemble later this week. Really looking forward to it. Anyway, while I was looking through the parts in the box, my brother-in-law called. I talked with (listened to) him for quite a while, and to pass the time I was looking closely at the mobo box, the artwork. So . . . who comes up with your box designs? I mean, I haven't seen too many helmuts with horns on them. Just curious .

Thanks.

marty

[LydiAtSoltek]

Hi Marty,
The box was designed by one of our art designers.

Thanks and regards,

[alex666]

Thanks Lydia. BTW, I meant "helmet". I've always wondered about so much of the computer manufacturers' artwork, so much of it is gamer-gothic or whatever, why that motif. I guess to appeal to gamers. I ask, because I'm going to be building the kt8pro-939 with my 80+ year-old father-in-law who wants to learn how to build computers. When I brought out the mobo in its box to show it to him, he did a double-take and a half. I think he thought it was a Lego kit! But when I opened it up and took out the mobo, he couldn't take his eyes off it. He's a retired communciations engineer, and he gave me and my 7 year-old son a very nice lesson in what some of the mobo components do. He is really looking forward to putting this system together.

marty

[LydiAtSoltek]

Dear All,
I am afraid that this is the last time I speak as "LydiAtSoltek" in this forum because I am going to leave Soltek.
Thank you so much for all of your help and suggestions about Soltek products all the time. Although I am not going to be with Soltek, you can still get the support from my colleagues in Soltek.
Maybe we will meet in some other forums in the future.
I hope all of you will be always satisfied with Soltek products.

Take care & good-bye!!

[alex666]

Best of luck to you Lydia. It was a pleasure. You did Soltek proud.

marty

[Radiohead]

Sorry to hear that Lydia. Hope your future holds promise. Believe your help here has been much appreciated. Perhaps you could coerce one of your co workers to actually post in your name. It would be a shame to loose our "represented status" however it won't be the first nor the last change of status for us diehard Soltekers.

Best of Luck.

[arcturus]

7/21 was Lydia's final post. Time to pull Soltek forum out of 'represented' category.