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

Hmmmm. Must admit I was thinking of upgrading my current rig to the Socket 939 version of this mobo and a X2 4800+....

Now that I have seen this board the thought of going Conroe (E6600) seems very tempting.

My current rig is:

Athlon XP 3000+
Asus A7n8X-x Mobo
2 x 512MB AData RAM (PC3200 Cas 2)
Gainward Bliss 7800GS AGP (20 Pipe Version)
Antec TruePower 550 PSU

With this in mind I have a few questions:
1) Will my RAM be compatible (unbuffered etc... is this okay to use?)
2) Will my graphics card work okay?
3) Will I see a big difference in performace over my old system? (I mainly play games like Oblivion, BF2 and do 3D rendering and photoshop work)
4) Does the board support IDE ATA 133?

The reason I am wanting to go down this cheap way of upgrading is due to lack of funds. I plan on changing the RAM and motherboard down the line (as well as the Graphics card) and wanted a nice stop gap that will last me some time...

Any suggestions?

Cheers
 
Any takers for answering my questions? ^
Got another question as well.... any recommendations for DDR2 ram that will not break the bank and will be useful for a future (proper) motherboard??

Cheers....
 
JonShannow said:
Any takers for answering my questions? ^
Got another question as well.... any recommendations for DDR2 ram that will not break the bank and will be useful for a future (proper) motherboard??

Cheers....
Click to expand...

The answer to all of your questions is YES. There is no reason to upgrade your ram to DDR2 right away as there is no performance gain to be had at all.
 
Ice Tea.. yes.. SATA have their own place on Bios

JohnShannow:
1.: yes
2.: yes
3.: no as u are mainly cpu limited
4.: yes

img wb, yes I am sure it's the hard drive to blame. I suggest spend 32£ and get an 80gigs SATA, which for windows partition is more than enough.

I went from a 30gigs ide100 5400rps to an 80 sata2 and had a noticeable loading difference. go for it
 
I built a system for my son with a DS3 and 6300 that runs at 3.26Ghz and it made me want a conroe based system to upgrade away from this old s478 dog I have been running for years! Didn't want to spend the £500+ just on myself. Was thinking of getting the VSTA and a 6600. If I get it up to 300 FSB that would have it running at 2.8 0GHz so that ought to be good enough, without having to buy new memory, or graphics card. All for £250ish.

This all sounds good in theory but what are the chances of getting this sort of FSB out of this board and stable with an e6600?

Most people seem to be using a e6300. Also has anyone tried mixing DDR and DDR2 at the same time? Shouldn't work but was wondering.... and for that matter mixing AGP and PCI-e at the same time, that would be interesting also LOL.

Update: Gonna switch horse anow and go fir the Asrock 775i65G it seems to guarantee 300 and the Asrock VSTA has problems getting there. It is locked at 300 to no higher than though.
 
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In case this effects anyone else. flashing from 1.1 to 1.7 broke my overclock - flashing back to 1.1 everything fine?

Running e6300 @ 7 x 312 - memory Corsair XMS 3200 C2

I had to tell the bios that I was using 266 memory ended up with the ram at - 416MHz FSB: DRAM of 4:3 and 2 2 2 6 1T according to CPU-Z.

Sandra 2007

Dhrystone ALU 20118
Whetstone iSSE3 13873

Oh rock stable been running flat out for a couple of weeks now.

Very happy for a budget intro to the Core 2 Duo

Shaun
 
Hey

So this m/b has been pretty stable so far?

I've had bad experiences with VIA in the past, so I don't want to buy another duff motherboard.

This looks ideal for me, as my Nforce 2 board has just packed in. So If I can use 2700 DDR memory, and my Leadtek 6800GT (AGP) it should be a nice little upgrade.

But would I notice much in terms of performance, coming from this spec:

XP2600+
Abit AN7
1GB 2700 DDR
Leadtek 6800GT
Audigy

To this Spec:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
1GB 2700 DDR (Can't afford 2GB)
Leadtek 6800GT
Audigy

Should cost under £200, so if the DUO really will make a difference then I'm happy to spend it. (I mainly use the pc for gaming, and video encoding.)

Thanks :D
 
Yep, that DUO will soundly beat your 2600+ in just about everything you're likely to do with your pc!

Most video encoding programs are multithreaded, so you will see a good boost in encoding speeds with the dual core duo too.
 
MonkeyMan said:
Hey

So this m/b has been pretty stable so far?
Click to expand...

Running 24x7 dual boot between WinXP Pro and WinXP Pro 64 bit - 100% stable. The machine has been running Chess matches between different engines this always has 1 core at 100% and depending on the engine both cores. Typically if a machine will run Chess 100% stable it will run anything. Oh I also ran Sandra burn in for 24 hours while concurrently running Folding.

I have a few odd messages from USB - 'the can perform faster' one - however I used Sandra to check the performance of my USB stick and it was fine???

I've had bad experiences with VIA in the past, so I don't want to buy another duff motherboard.

This looks ideal for me, as my Nforce 2 board has just packed in. So If I can use 2700 DDR memory, and my Leadtek 6800GT (AGP) it should be a nice little upgrade.

But would I notice much in terms of performance, coming from this spec:

XP2600+
Abit AN7
1GB 2700 DDR
Leadtek 6800GT
Audigy

To this Spec:

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
1GB 2700 DDR (Can't afford 2GB)
Leadtek 6800GT
Audigy

Should cost under £200, so if the DUO really will make a difference then I'm happy to spend it. (I mainly use the pc for gaming, and video encoding.)

Thanks :D
Click to expand...

You will notice a huge difference (when multi tasking) or just when some background task (typically AV no longer steals your only core).

I went from XP3200+ on Abit NF7-S.

If I was buying again I would try to go e6400, the 8x rather than 7x multiplier will give a better overclock on this board.

Shaun
 
Does the Bios give priority to the IDE sockets or the Sata sockets on
this board ?

Some of the older Sata 1 motherboards gave priority to the IDE sockets
so the IDE drives always got setup as Disk 0 and Disk 1 in the bootup.
 
Ice Tea said:
Does the Bios give priority to the IDE sockets or the Sata sockets on
this board ?

Some of the older Sata 1 motherboards gave priority to the IDE sockets
so the IDE drives always got setup as Disk 0 and Disk 1 in the bootup.
Click to expand...

I have 1 SATA Plus DVD (IDE) and DVD/RW (IDE) no problems boot order adjustable - have not tried with multiple HDs

Shaun
 
Thanks ShaunBrewer but i need someone who is running
both Sata and IDE Hdd's together as DVD drives are not
assigned Disk 0,Disk1 ect ect like Hdd's
 
Firstly I'm glad this thread exists.

I want to go from

Asus A7N8x-deluxe-400
Barton 2500
2X512MB Crucial PC3200 Ram
AGP Geforce 6600GT
120GB Seagate Barracuda HD
40GB Maxtor (backup)
550W Antex Neo PSU
LG burner..


Usual bits



I want to go to a Core 2 6300 but keep ram and Video card.

I'm a bit confused about the FSB of motherboard/CPU.

From what I can gather it looks like the Conroe/Allendale FSB is dual pumped 133! = 266MHz....hence the E6300 is 7x266 = 1862MHz and E6400 is 8x266 =2128MHz
As my ram is certified as 200MHz and will actually 220MHz easily does this mean that I can use this ram with this board and a core 2 and overclock it using my DDR ram?

Possibly thinking about the E6400 as this has a higher multiplier.

Many thanks

T
 
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