ASRock 775Dual-880Pro and PCI-E x4

[norfykev]

Hi,

I used to be a regular member of this board a few years back but haven't upgraded my PC since 2002 some time and in my absence, my old membership seems to have been deleted.

Anyway, I've just upgraded my PC again and want to upgrade my current Geforce 4 Ti4600 AGP card to a new, hopefully faster PCI-E card. I have just bought an ASRock dual mobo with both graphics connectors and also both DDR and DDR2 memory sockets. However, I've read something about compatibility problems with the ASRock PCI-E port, the one they refer to as AGI Express. I gather it's the equivalent of a PCI-E x4 port...

FYI my new setup is currently:
ASRock 775Dual-880Pro mobo
Pentium 4 640 with HT, 3.20GHz @ 800fsb
2 x Corsair 512Mb XMS3200 DDR Ram (1Gb Total)
Creative GF4 Ti4600, 128Mb memory
DVD Writer
DVD ROM
ZIP Drive
Floppy
120Gb ATA133 HDD
160Gb ATA133 HDD
Onboard sound
Onboard LAN

I've searched the forums as comprehensively as I can and I can't find that much mention of this board, although everyone seems to be raving about the ASRock 939Dual AMD-based board.

The ASRock website gives details of the mobo here and also gives their version of a graphics card compatibility list here

I'm thinking of getting an Nvidia 6600 or 6800 card on PCI-Express but don't want to spend out the cash and then find it's not compatible. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of which boards can be used on PCI-E x4 ports, or more specifically this ASRock one?

I'd be much obliged for any help that anyone can give me.

Apart from this issue, the mobo was a breeze to setup and is running fine atm, although I haven't tried to O/C it yet.

 

[easyrider]

Hi,

I used to be a regular member of this board a few years back but haven't upgraded my PC since 2002 some time and in my absence, my old membership seems to have been deleted.

Anyway, I've just upgraded my PC again and want to upgrade my current Geforce 4 Ti4600 AGP card to a new, hopefully faster PCI-E card. I have just bought an ASRock dual mobo with both graphics connectors and also both DDR and DDR2 memory sockets. However, I've read something about compatibility problems with the ASRock PCI-E port, the one they refer to as AGI Express. I gather it's the equivalent of a PCI-E x4 port...

FYI my new setup is currently:
ASRock 775Dual-880Pro mobo
Pentium 4 640 with HT, 3.20GHz @ 800fsb
2 x Corsair 512Mb XMS3200 DDR Ram (1Gb Total)
Creative GF4 Ti4600, 128Mb memory
DVD Writer
DVD ROM
ZIP Drive
Floppy
120Gb ATA133 HDD
160Gb ATA133 HDD
Onboard sound
Onboard LAN

I've searched the forums as comprehensively as I can and I can't find that much mention of this board, although everyone seems to be raving about the ASRock 939Dual AMD-based board.

The ASRock website gives details of the mobo here and also gives their version of a graphics card compatibility list here

I'm thinking of getting an Nvidia 6600 or 6800 card on PCI-Express but don't want to spend out the cash and then find it's not compatible. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of which boards can be used on PCI-E x4 ports, or more specifically this ASRock one?

I'd be much obliged for any help that anyone can give me.

Apart from this issue, the mobo was a breeze to setup and is running fine atm, although I haven't tried to O/C it yet.

I did a build for someone using this mobo.And installed a 6600 GT in the pci-e slot no problem.

apparantly there is not much of a difference with the full x16 pci-e slot.

 

[norfykev]

OK, so next question...

Assuming I can fit any PCI-E card into this mobo, which graphics chip is the best bang for my buck. I'm not after a harry cheapo card but I'm not in a position to spend silly money either.

As I said in my first post, I've always liked NVidia chipsets and for my price range I'm looking at either a 6600 or a 6800 I reckon. Now, obviously the 6800 would be a better card but is it worth the extra money? 6600s seems to be about the £60 - £71 mark, 6600GTs around £100 and 6800s around the £160-ish mark...

Up to about £100 would suit me quite well, but is it really worth the extra £60-odd for the 6800?

Again, any advice would be much appreciated...

 

[easyrider]

I would get the fastest card you can afford.

I would get the OcUK GeForce 6800 GS 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) for 129 quid on this week only.

Better than the 6600gt by quite a margin and not that more expensive.
Plus thay are fantastic clockers.

 

[norfykev]

Thanks for your help Easy Rider. Is it worth paying extra for a card with 512Mb memory as opposed to one with 256Mb? And what difference does DDR3 memory make, if any?

The Gainward "Goes like hell" is on This week only for £139 + VAT and has DDR3 and 512Mb of it too. That's another £30 on top of the one you suggest though... £165 might be stretching the finances a bit...

 

[easyrider]

Unless you game above 1280 x 1024 then there is no performance gain with a 512mb card.

get the 129 quid one like I suggested.And save some cash.