| We'll wrap it up with a benchmark round from Unreal Tournament 2003. We utilized a simple benchmark script that does "Fly By" demos on the Antalus, the Asbestos and the Citadel levels. We set the resolution to 640X480, so as to take as much of the workload off the GeForce4 Ti4200 and IGP GeForce4 as possible and place it on the CPU and System Bandwidth.  | | Unreal Tournament 2003 | | DirectX 8 Gaming Performance | | 
640X480 - 32 Bit Color
640X480 - 32 Bit Color
640X480 - 32 Bit Color In these tests, the Soltek manages to jump ahead of all the other nForce2 boards we have tested up to this point. The margin is fairly small, but the Soltek nForce2 solution shows that it can keep up with its competitors. Here we see the IGP struggling a bit, with even the lowest settings. We'd also like to point out that the IGP comes in right around 60 FPS, which by most standards is still considered playable. Although most gamers enjoy playing at higher settings, having a motherboard that gives you everything and still lets you play some of the latest titles, without even having an AGP card in the slot, is money well spent. The nForce2 chipset makes a great pairing for an AMD CPU. With the many varieties it comes available in and its abundant feature set, this chipset is hard to beat. Soltek wanted us to point out that they strive to deliver extremely stable motherboards with some overclocking potential, but most of their efforts go to system reliability. We have to say that we enjoyed working with this board, as it has proven Soltek's claim to reliability. Soltek SL-75MRN-L Analysis:
The Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard was a great board to test. System reliability was as good as it gets and this board even showed some room for overclocking. While this board comes as a very good all-in-one solution, it is lacking other amenities that a good portion of end users like to see in today's motherboards. This board does not offer ATA RAID or SATA RAID, Firewire support, and serious overclocking potential. Although Soltek makes no claim that this board is specifically aiming for that crowd however. If you're in the market for an all-in-one solution that will keep you from having to open the case from time to time to figure out what's wrong, then the Soltek SL-75MRN-L is for you. The great thing about this board is that it appeals to serious gamers as well since it offers an AGP 4X/8X compatible slot to upgrade to a more capable video card. And we must look at what this board does offer: support for the latest Athlon CPU's, Dual Channel DDR400, 6 USB 2.0 ports, an on-board IGP, 6-channel sound, and 5 32-bit PCI expansion slots. While the Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard may not appeal to everyone, it certainly happens to be a great pick for the "all-in-one" niche. | | | -
Fast and stable -
Good value -
AGP 8X -
Supports 333MHz Athlon chips -
Onboard audio is excellent -
Dual DDR400 support -
USB 2.0 -
Great software bundle - No SATA support
- IGP not great for gaming
- Second RJ-45 jack missing
- No Firewire support
| | We're giving the Soltek SL-75MRN-L motherboard a HotHardware Heat Meter rating of... Discuss this or any other Hot Hardware Review in the PC Hardware Forum!
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