The BIOS of the K8TPro needed
some work when we got it. Fortunately they have been tending to it,
so instead of even trying we flashed to the latest version first
thing. The new BIOS offers a much better range of memory options and
some cures for using certain types of TCCD memory which is in an
abundance these days. One of the nice things about the Soltek BIOS
was everything that you really need is there including the 2.5v
option which helps in stabilizing the chipset voltage under
overclocked conditions.
In the Soltek BIOS we went right to the
Frequency/Voltage control from the main BIOS screen since this is
where all the good options are. The Soltek uses a traditional Award
BIOS which is very common for enthusiast boards. This is where
you'll want to start if you intend to overclock.
The multiplier can be set to pretty much anything except half
multipliers. There is a utility called Crystal CPUID that is
traditionally used for laptops that allows you to adjust to half
multipliers within Windows.
This is one of the Soltek's strong points, adjustable vcore up to 1.7.
Just watch your temps!
This is a nice option, adjustable chipset voltage! You'll want to push
this up the further you go in FSB.
Here is the largely important voltage for your memory. It would be
nice to have closer to 3.0v due to the aggressive timings of the
board, but at least you wont be frying your memory.
Last but not least your AGP voltage option. This is a must for older
cards, but the newer cards will do just fine at 1.6 or lower.
The Soltek BIOS is nothing extraordinary, but
it does get the job done. I like the 2.5v option for the chipset
voltage, and the 200-300fsb range. the memory options are adequate
after flashing to the newest BIOS, and offer CAS, TRCD, TRAS, and
TRP settings. These are kind of minimal, but that doesn't mean that
you can't tweak the other settings with software such as WPCREDIT
which will give you all the options you need when windows loads. The
board had no problem running 1T all the way up to its max, although
we didn't try to run more than two 512mb DIMM's. A gig of memory
should be plenty for most of us.
BIOS settings for DRAM
HTT settings prove to be critical for this board. Keeping it as close
to 1000mhz is very important for stability. Options are 300, 600,
800, and 1000mhz.
As mentioned earlier the Soltek has a lot of
value. You have the choice of using the VIA SATA RAID or the Promise
SATA RAID. We chose the Promise RAID for our setup and although we
found it significantly slower (embarrassingly) then the VIA RAID, it
was actually noticeably faster in overall functionality for end user
tasks in Windows and for gaming. That's the kind of concept that may
make those that are into IDE benchmarks shiver, but its very
difficult to standardize using 10k raptors.
Here are the options in the BIOS to use the VIA or Promise RAID.
The VIA onboard devices menu.
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