Ah review memories. The first motherboard review I did for Motherboards.org was done on a Soltek motherboard, the SL75-FRN-L. It's pretty amazing that it's almost been a year since that review. Since that time I've written a couple of other motherboard reviews based upon Soltek boards, including the MRN-L, based upon NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset, and the SL-75FRV based upon Via's KT400 chipset.
Soltek as a company is a relative newcomer in the computer industry. The company incorporated in 1996, a scant 8 years ago in Taiwan. They have divisions in Taiwan, Europe and China. Their retail presence in the U.S. market is currently limited to two vendors, Newegg and Misr Corporation. The U.S. branch of Soltek, Soltek USA stopped operating early last year, making it hard to purchase boards from anyone except Newegg and Misr. Truthfully, though I love using Newegg and Amr from Misr is a cool guy, it's something to keep in mind when purchasing a motherboard based upon this chipset in the United States.
Intel first announced their 865 chipset early last year, following in the footsteps of it's bigger brother, the 875P. These two chipsets introduced support for HyperThreading and the Northwood CPUs with up to a 800 MHz FSB to Intel's lineup. The two motherboard chipsets have been a resounding success, with the vast majority of the motherboards sold today being based upon Intel chipsets. Soltek announced the SL-865-GR late last year combining the successful 865 chip from Intel with a Gigabit Ethernet controller.
