Review: Soltek 8KAN2E-GR nForce3 250Gb S754 Motherboard - Mainboard - HEXUS.net

System setup and notes

Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.

Motherboards

Soltek K8AN2E-GR, S754, NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb chipset (Rev T1.2 BIOS)
BIOSTAR K8NHA Grand, S754, NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb chipset
DFI LANPARTY i865PE Springdale

Other components

AMD Sempron 3100+ (1.8GHz, 256KB L2 cache)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, AGP, 350/1000
512MB OCZ Platinum Rev 2 PC3200 RAM, run at 2-2-2-5 @ DDR400 on both AMD boards
512MB (2x256MB) Corsair XMS3500 RAM, run at 2-2-2-5 @ DDR400 on i865PE
Pioneer 105 DVD-RW
Western Digital 160GB (WD1600) 8MB cache hard drive
Dell P991 19" monitor

Software

Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0b runtime
NVIDIA ForceWare 5.10 driver set
Intel 5.0.2.1003 driver set
NVIDIA ForceWare 61.77 graphics driver
Pifast v4.1 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
HEXUS XviD encoding test
KribiBench 1.1
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark - 2004 512x384
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
Call of Duty - HEXUS custom benchmark
Comanche 4 benchmark
DOOM 3 - Timedemo 1

Notes

I'll be taking a look at the Soltek board's performance against a BIOSTAR nForce3 250Gb motherboard. A direct comparison should determine if Soltek is on the right path. Further, I'll be using a budget S754 CPU, the Sempron 3100+, for testing. I'll also add in the results obtained from a Pentium 4 2.8GHz Prescott CPU and DFI Springdale board combination. The Sempron line isn't really scheduled to compete against a full-blown Pentium 4 part, but the 3100+ shares many family traits present in the excellent Athlon 64 range.

There were no problems to report during installation or benchmarking. I'll leave talk of overclocking until the end of the article. I reckon you'll be pleasantly surprised by the K8AN2E-GR's results.