Intel 845 DDR Motherboard Roundup - December 2001

Soltek SL-85DR-C

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Soltek is another manufacturer that is quickly gaining a name for themselves. The 85DR-C offers some unique features that the competition isn't able to deliver on but for starters we'll have a look at the basic features of the board.

The board features 6 PCI slots and the conventional 2 DIMM slots. The Award BIOS setup allows you to select the FSB frequency in 1MHz increments from 100MHz up to 255MHz; the CPU core voltage can be adjusted as well.

What's most interesting about the board is Soltek's Redstorm Overclocker function which tests to see what FSB frequencies are "stable" and automatically selects one for you. For us it selected 116MHz which was a bit conservative considering we were able to reach 125MHz with the motherboard but the 116MHz setting is probably more reliable than the borderline 125MHz frequency we clocked the board at.

If you do happen to pick a FSB frequency that is entirely too high causing your board not to POST, the BIOS will automatically reset the frequency and bring the clock back down to 100MHz without you having to clear the CMOS settings manually. This is actually a very useful feature that we wish more manufacturers would implement, it makes overclocking much less frustrating.

Soltek includes a nice software package with the board including Partition Magic 6.0. The onboard audio is driven by the ALC201A codec which we've already seen on a number of motherboards.