- Revealing Soltek's SL-KT880E-RL

We've just been informed that Soltek have released a new 32bit Athlon board based on the recent "KT880" K7 chipset by VIA. The Inquirer were the first to mention this exciting new chipset a couple of months back, pointing out that it provides dual channel DDR400 (finally VIA... sheesh) along with a host of other features. Soltek have kindly provided us with several images showing us the layout and chipset of their new KT880 offering. The zip file containing these can be obtained by right clicking here and choosing "save target as".

Additionally, I have uploaded the official document of which lists the specifications/features of Soltek's board. Just right click and "save target as" here to grab it.

- SIS Flexible Dual Channel

The folks at Accelnation have taken a closer look at SIS's "Flexible Dual Channel" operation to see just how well it handles mixed memory configuration environments. With other chipsets out there, mismatched DIMM sizes or more then 2 sticks can cause all sorts of grief, particularly when trying to keep dual channel mode in place. SiS have effectively solved this problem with their 655FX (and TX, of which is said to become available very soon).

Approximately a month ago we took a look at SIS's answer to Intel's 865P, the 655FX. The Dual Channel performance of the 655FX was competitive to the 875P overall. We were impressed with the price/performance the 655FX offered over competing solutions. In our chipset preview we mentioned that the 655FX supported a feature called "Flexible Dual Channel." This feature allows users to "mix and match" memory sizes and odd number of sticks to operate in Dual Channel mode.