Soltek K8TPro-939: Moving A64 to 939

FSB Overclocking: Soltek K8TPro-939

While Soltek is best known for delivering good value, part of that value equation has always been the outstanding overclocking capabilities of Soltek boards. For that reason, we expected a lot from the Soltek overclocking tests. As you will see, we had very mixed results.

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Default Voltage
Processor:	Athlon 64 FX53 2.4GHz
CPU Voltage:	1.5V (default)
Cooling:	Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 Heatsink/Fan
Power Supply:	OCZ Power Stream 520W
Memory:	OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev. 2 OR Geil PC3200 Ultra X
Hard Drive:	Seagate 120MB PATA (IDE) 8MB Cache
Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio)	204x13 220x12 2651MHz (+10.5%)
Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio)	228 x 9,10,or 11 (2508MHz) (1:1 Memory, 2 DIMMs in DC mode)

The Soltek did a good job with Standard Ratio overclocking, reaching our highest previous overclock at 220x12 or 2651MHz. However, no matter what lower ratio we chose, the highest CPU clock setting that we could achieve with stability was 228. SATA was not an issue here, since our test bed was running an IDE Hard Drive. All tests were run with the Asynchronous PCI/AGP set to Enabled to fix the frequency.

To try to find the answer to these low clock frequencies, we decided to try to run the K8TPro-939 with the Asynchronous PCI/AGP disabled. Without a PCI/AGP lock, we reached the same 228 frequency as our top stable setting. We can only conclude that the AGP/PCI lock is not working on this Soltek board. Since we have tested several recent VIA K8T800 Pro motherboards that definitely have working AGP/PCI locks, we suspect that the problem is with the Soltek BIOS or design.

It is very disappointing to find such limited frequency capabilities on the Soltek board. With other Socket 939 motherboards reaching 275 to 290 with the Athlon 64, 228 is a very poor performance. The Soltek is, otherwise, a very capable overclocker, matching the best that we have seen with this CPU at stock frequencies.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

As part of our overclocking tests, a full range of stress tests and benchmarks were run to ensure that the Soltek K8TPro-939 was stable at each overclocked speed. This included Prime95 torture tests, and the addition of other tasks - data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel - while Prime95 was running in the background. 228MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the Soltek while running these tests at default ratio and default voltage. This matches the best stock overclock with this FX53 processor.