Soltek NV400-L64: Purple, Practical, AND Performance!
by Wesley Fink on August 11, 2003 10:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Soltek NV400-L64 is a bargain-priced, single-channel nForce2 400 board whose primary reason for being is to compete with the VIA KT600 with a lower-cost NVIDIA chipset, and to provide compelling value for mainstream users. It meets both of these goals very well, and has to be considered a roaring success.The surprising performance of the single-channel nForce2 400, however, also makes the NV400-L64 the ideal board in situations that you might not have considered. Its top-notch gaming performance makes it an ideal choice for a top-performing gaming rig, and its low price will save the gamer some money, to be spent on a better video card, for example. While the gaming performance of the Soltek is excellent, it is not a knock-out punch, as its performance is very close to the gaming performance of top Ultra 400 boards.
For mainstream use in multimedia creation and general office work, the NV400-L64 is also a competent performer. If you are working on a limited budget and/or desire an excellent price point, you won’t be making any performance sacrifices with this Soltek. In fact, you may also save money buying memory. Top performance can be achieved on the NV400-L64 with just one stick of memory, compared to nForce2 Ultra 400 boards that need a matched pair of DIMMs for best performance.
Despite these positive remarks, there are some weaknesses in the nForce2 400 chipset. Applications like SpecViewperf 7.0 show that there are trade-offs with the single-channel solution. In truly demanding workstation applications, the Soltek NV400-L64 is no substitute for a top nForce2 Ultra 400 dual-channel solution.
It’s hard not to get excited about a board that sells for about $70 and outperforms the majority of Athlon boards in gaming. It’s easy to recommend the Soltek for a top-notch gaming rig, as well as a mainstream system that provides top-performance with few frills at a value price. It is not, however, the board that beats the nForce2 Ultra 400 in demanding applications.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link
Hello All!!!I've been buying components last 6 months one at a time, and the Soltek Nv400L was my last purchace.
System Specs:
430 Watt Antec Power Supply
Athlon XP 2500 cpu
512 Corsair Xms c2pt memory-single stick
Ati 9500 pro 128 video card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
1 80 gig Western Digital 8meg cache hard drive
1 80 gig Maxtor 8meg cache hard drive
Liteon 522446s Cd writer
Liteon 165h Dvd rom
Philips Brilliance 107p monitor
Windows XP professional
I don' need serial ata, my special editions are plenty fast for the dollars spent, serial needs to mature also. I had a Kt3ultra2, with pc2100 Infineon 512 stick, and a XP2000.
I was concerned about this upgrade, I don't trust cheap boards. Had real bad time with a ECS pos last year.
Let me tell you, my system right now, is THE best bang for the buck. I am so impressed. All I needed was the lan, and it too kills my pci network card. This Soltek mobo should not be understated, to say the very, very least. I also like the fact of just having my one stick of corsair, ranther than having 2 dual sticks. If you need all the "features", pass on it. If you want amazing speed, ultra reliability, and great overclocking (Soltek has O/C bios at request, FULL ram tweaking), grab this board.
I can't believe something this cheap is so damn fast, reliable.............
Don't be fooled people. Ya, I have no bragging rights, but I have a great little purple mobo on crack, HIGHLY SUGGESTED.
THIS IS THE MOST UNDERATED MOBO ON THE MARKET RIGHT NOW. ABSOLUTELEY. You don't hear much about it cause Nvidia etc. etc. is not getting rich off it. Its a gem.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - link
Can't see the benchmarks, too. Using Netscape7 on Linux.Anonymous User - Monday, August 25, 2003 - link
Uhh... Did something happened to the benchmark pics? (They are not showing up) Anyone else experiencing this? or Is my browser acting up?Maybe another ongoing article update perhaps?
Anonymous User - Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - link
To the author,PCI bus speed runs at a fixed frequency for nForce2. It isn't half of the AGP bus speed. Please use a IOSS RD2 Pro PC Geiger PCI Bus Multifunction Analyzer to verify.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - link
Jeff, stop posting, it's already known fact that Gigabyte's nForce2 U400 and other U400 motherboards perform exactly the same as Epox and ASUS's boards. Your argument request is useless, waste's Anandtech's time, and is getting old frankly.Anonymous User - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
I'm really surprised by the figures you guys obtained - I had an ASUS A7N8X-X (non-ultra) and it was crap! I could only get 8,000 in 3Dmark01, upon changing to the ASUS Ultra (deluxe) and keeping everything the same I got 13,500!!!!Also, my A7V8X-X was way faster (12,000 3DMark01) - Don't know why, maybe the A7N8X-X was not working correctly(?).
Jeff7181 - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
Again I ask... where the hell is the popular boards like the A7N8X Deluxe and 8RDA+?Anonymous User - Sunday, August 17, 2003 - link
is a7n8x-x anygood?Anonymous User - Saturday, August 16, 2003 - link
I am awaiting further testing on other nForce2 400/Ultra motherboard, e.g. chaintech 7njl3 or 7njl4 or gigabyte counterparts which are also very competitive in the market.wesley, hear my voice?!
Anonymous User - Saturday, August 16, 2003 - link
And one last question - is it not possible that the 'Auto' setting for memory speed actually runs the memory in sync with FSB? I just want to be sure.