ASRock 775Dual-VSTA for Conroe (Core2) with both AGP/PCI-E and DDR1/DDR2 support

crazyswede · 8 Aug 2006 at 13:45

This is a sort of official ASRock 775Dual-VSTA help and info thread... and hopefully it can become a useful thread for those people who want to buy it or already have it.

Unfortunately OcUK don’t sell this motherboard yet, but they do sell ASRock motherboards so it might happen. It seems to be a good way of jumping halfway to a full upgrade. It costs about £36, so its nice and cheap, but please don’t ask for links in this thread.

http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-VSTA.htm

1. Supports FSB1066/800/533MHz processor, EM64T CPU and H-T Technology
2. Supports Dual Channel DDRII667 (DDRII x 2 DIMMs) and DDR400 (DDR x 2 DIMMs)
3. Untied Overclocking : During Overclocking, FSB enjoys better margin due to fixed PCIE/ PCI Buses
4. 1 x PCI Express Graphics slot
5. 1 x AGP 8X slot
6. Hybrid Booster - Safe Overclocking Technology
7. 2 ports of SerialATA 1.5Gb/s, support RAID 0, 1, JBOD, 2 ATA133 IDE ports
8. HDMI_SPDIF header, providing SPDIF audio output to HDMI VGA card, allows the system to connect HDMI Digital TV/projector/LCD devices.
9. 7.1 channel with High Definition Audio, 10/100 Ethernet LAN
10. Windows Vista™ Premium Logo Hardware Ready
11. HD 8CH I/O: 4 ready-to-use USB2.0 ports, HD 7.1 channel audio jacks

The latest BIOS version is 1.50 (I am using it and I have not had any problems)

Some advice that might help:

When I installed my DDR1 400 ram it did not automatically put it at DDR400 but instead at DDR333.

When just using 1 SATA drive you need to turn raid off in the bios otherwise it will not be picked up by windows when installing and booting. If you do a bios upgrade do not panic if windows is not found. This is because the bios has been reset and the raid setting is now back on.

My setup so far:

Core2 E6600
2x512MB DDR1 Crucial Ballistix Ram
Geforce 6800 GT AGP

I have not had time to do many benchmarks, but I will post them when I have.

crazyswede · 8 Aug 2006 at 22:33

Something strange is happening with mine, but it might just be the program reading the hardware wrong. Whenn the ram is set to DDR333 in the bios, CPU-Z says the ram is running at 444MHz and if I set it to DDR400 then CPU-Z says 533Mhz (The ram is rated as DDR500). Yesterday with DDR400 setting 3Dmark06 was fine... today 3DMark05 kept on crashing until I set it to DDR333???

Strax what does Cpu-z say about your ram?

The Anandtech 'DDR vs DDR2 performance' article is interesting. There was not much difference between DDR and DDR2 memory. I could stick with my DDR memory, but I want 2GB so I will have to get DDR2 in the future anyways.

EDIT//

Everest reports what should be the right speeds at the moment 167Mhz (333Mhz). The problem with 3Dmark05 crashing could be because the timings are too strong.

crazyswede · 12 Aug 2006 at 23:56

I am sorry that I have not posted any benchmarks, and I will not be able to do sor maybe 1 1/2 weeks as I am on site working. I have done a few benchmarks which I will post later on. One thing that the benchmarks have shown is that the agp graphics cards don't perform worse on this motherboard.

crazyswede · 16 Aug 2006 at 11:34

I am still on a survey vessel running the job. But I have bought a T-Mobile card to access the internet

Unfortunatly it made me spend more money. Yesterday I ordered the 2GB of Geil memory that OcUK have on offer, I could not resist it

. Hopefully it should work in this board and in the next one I get. It will be interesting to see how it performs. Arghh... I want to be at home

Oh well

crazyswede · 6 Dec 2006 at 16:33

Street said:
There wouldn't be any problems using an X1900XT with this board would there? I need to get a new motherboard and I'm thinking that it would be better off me moving to Conroe, getting this board and keeping my DDR memory for now. Seems pointless spending loads on another 939 board...

I am about to order the X1950XT, so we will see if it works

As Darg says, it is limited to 4xPCI-E... I don't know how much this effects performance?

crazyswede · 7 Dec 2006 at 22:55

Well I have now ordered the ATI HIS X1950XT Silent. If that works then the 1950 Pro should work, I think. But I am going away for a week, from tomorrow, before the card arrives.