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Introduction

Soltek has made a reputation for itself with high performance, low cost parts but surprisingly, they remain under the radar for the most part in the enthusiast circles. We recently took a look at their 865G-based Qbic 3401a SFF system which impressed us a lot for its robust expandability (two optical drive bays in a SFF!) and low noise levels. Today we take a look at what certainly is two conflicting schools of thought, a high end chipset in a low cost package. Soltek drives straight towards the enthusiast but budget conscious community with its Socket 754 NForce 3 250Gb based K8AN2E-GR.

We've seen several review sites label NForce 3 250 boards as NForce 3 250Gb boards. To clarify, the Soltek is a 250Gb board. The telltale sign is the onboard firewall and the Nvidia Gbe. Nearly every motherboard today is sold with gigabit ethernet though so the best metric in determining whether the board is a 250 or a 250Gb is indeed the inclusion of the firewall. Nvidia's native Gbe should have much greater throughput than an external chip plus it has the added benefit of being off the PCI bus as to not saturate it during intensive networking tasks. Check out our coverage of the 250/250Gb chipset to find the complete list of differences between the two. I do not think we need an entire article pointing out which boards are 250Gbs and which ones are regular 250. I highly suggest checking out the manufacturer site and not relying strictly on reviews. The 250Gb is definitely the enthusiast chipset and should be seriously considered over a competing 250 solution as the small difference in price is not worth stressing over.

250Gb - Not the same as the 250

Specifications