ASRock 775Dual-VSTA for Conroe (Core2) with both AGP/PCI-E and DDR1/DDR2 support
- Thread starter crazyswede
- Start date
Two points:
1. It won't take my Power LED connector as the M/B only has 2 pins, and my connector uses 3 (middle is empty).
2. The Intel Heatsink was a real pain to install.
Apart from that, it's going ok. The Bios does feel a bit cheap though, but this is a budget board.
1. It won't take my Power LED connector as the M/B only has 2 pins, and my connector uses 3 (middle is empty).
2. The Intel Heatsink was a real pain to install.
Apart from that, it's going ok. The Bios does feel a bit cheap though, but this is a budget board.
Soldato
You could just snap that connector and use the pins on either side still, would work fine with future setups also.
Terminator, conroe runs at 266mhz so your ram will seriously limit the processor imo since your ram is 200mhz.
The stock fsb is 266, you run the memory on a ratio but Im not sure what ratios this board does. a lot of boards would do as a minimum, 1:1 which would exclude your memory from working unless you could underclock it all. Again Im not sure if it does that.
The bus speed is then 4x the fsb, thats the quad pumped bit
Terminator, conroe runs at 266mhz so your ram will seriously limit the processor imo since your ram is 200mhz.
The stock fsb is 266, you run the memory on a ratio but Im not sure what ratios this board does. a lot of boards would do as a minimum, 1:1 which would exclude your memory from working unless you could underclock it all. Again Im not sure if it does that.
The bus speed is then 4x the fsb, thats the quad pumped bit
Im not so sure what the DDR1 memory runs at really. Just installed this board, along with a 6600 and my old OCZ VX 3200 stuff (Which wouldnt run above 220 in my AMD rig) and it's supposedly running 1:1 CPUz reports the memory running at 532mhz 2,2,2,5 1T. Sandra says I get just over 4gig bandwidth so maybe thats why it is running so high. In the AMD rig, it'd get over 6gb and fail over that.silversurfer said:
Will tinker some more see whats what.
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hey all
I have an amd 64 3400+ with 2gb of ddr1 I don't have a lot of money so I am looking to upgrade to a Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 with this board. Now my question is will my 7800gtx work ok and would it be faster then my current setup as the board only uses pcie x4 and my board is x16
Thanks
I have an amd 64 3400+ with 2gb of ddr1 I don't have a lot of money so I am looking to upgrade to a Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 with this board. Now my question is will my 7800gtx work ok and would it be faster then my current setup as the board only uses pcie x4 and my board is x16
Thanks
From what I heard there isn't much difference between 4x and 16x. At most a 5% dropoff.
I'm not sure whether or not to go for the E6300 or E6400 for this board. If I could find a bare CPU without having to waste money on the stock heatsink and fan for the E6400 then I'd go with that but right now I can only see that option for the E6300 on OCUK.
My RAM is DDR1 400 so it should work fine with overclocking to around 300Mhz which I've heard is this motherboards FSB limit. Anyone have any idea what the best ratios would be for me with this RAM and what the best overclocking FSB speeds I can get are?
I'm not sure whether or not to go for the E6300 or E6400 for this board. If I could find a bare CPU without having to waste money on the stock heatsink and fan for the E6400 then I'd go with that but right now I can only see that option for the E6300 on OCUK.
My RAM is DDR1 400 so it should work fine with overclocking to around 300Mhz which I've heard is this motherboards FSB limit. Anyone have any idea what the best ratios would be for me with this RAM and what the best overclocking FSB speeds I can get are?
Do you mean a 2:3 ratio between RAM and CPU? That will probably be what I'll be using. I'm still not sure which cpu I will be getting. I might go for the 6400 as it has a higher multiplier so the speeds on this mobo will be able to go higher.
Has anyone heard word of unlocking the multiplier through a BIOS update on this motherboard in the future? It really is the only thing missing on this board.
Has anyone heard word of unlocking the multiplier through a BIOS update on this motherboard in the future? It really is the only thing missing on this board.
My 775Dual-VSTA is very unstable. It boots up fine and I managed to install Windows XP (doing a quick format of the HD). I started installing windows updates and I got all sorts of weird read errors, that it couldn't read various files in system32 folder, sometimes hitting retry worker but not every time. Upon reboot windows bluescreens every time.
I'm now trying to do a proper format of the drive and after 20 minutes it is only at 1%... although it does seem to be working at times and is warm (not hot). I'm trying to figure out what the problem can be but getting nowhere. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Everything is new, except graphic card.
E6300 Conroe
2GB GEIL 667 MHZ
6800GT AGP
Samsung HD160JJ S-ATA
Antec 450W PSU
Windows Home
Bios is 1.5
In the bios I've turned off the SATA Raid and I've set the RAM frequency to 333 MHz as recommended on the ASRock website.
On the Samsung Spinpoint HD I've set the Speed Selection Jumper to 1.5Gbps.
I'm now trying to do a proper format of the drive and after 20 minutes it is only at 1%... although it does seem to be working at times and is warm (not hot). I'm trying to figure out what the problem can be but getting nowhere. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Everything is new, except graphic card.
E6300 Conroe
2GB GEIL 667 MHZ
6800GT AGP
Samsung HD160JJ S-ATA
Antec 450W PSU
Windows Home
Bios is 1.5
In the bios I've turned off the SATA Raid and I've set the RAM frequency to 333 MHz as recommended on the ASRock website.
On the Samsung Spinpoint HD I've set the Speed Selection Jumper to 1.5Gbps.
I would if I could but I can't boot windows anymore or install a new windows.
If I try normal format it just hangs at 1%.
And although it worked first time when I try to do a quick format now I get: "Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged".
Also sometimes when I boot the bios doesn't find the SATA disk, then I just hit the reset button and voila there it is?? I have tried both SATA1 and SATA2 connnector on the mobo and seems to be the same...
So it seems my probablem is definetely the HD, but what on earth could it be?
If I try normal format it just hangs at 1%.
And although it worked first time when I try to do a quick format now I get: "Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged".
Also sometimes when I boot the bios doesn't find the SATA disk, then I just hit the reset button and voila there it is?? I have tried both SATA1 and SATA2 connnector on the mobo and seems to be the same...
So it seems my probablem is definetely the HD, but what on earth could it be?
Hmm, strange indeed. The only course of action to take now is to try FDISKing the drive to see where that gets you.
www.bootdisk.com has a win98se bootdisk for download. Make that, boot with it, run FDISK, delete all partitions, and make a new one.
In windows setup, format it yet again with NTFS and see what happens.
You can also run scandisk from that floppy disk and see how many bad sectors there are.
www.bootdisk.com has a win98se bootdisk for download. Make that, boot with it, run FDISK, delete all partitions, and make a new one.
In windows setup, format it yet again with NTFS and see what happens.
You can also run scandisk from that floppy disk and see how many bad sectors there are.
Thanks for that tip bilston, but no joy.
I downloaded the bootdisk, fdisk and booted up with the bootdisk and ran fdisk.
I deleted the old partition, created a new primary dos partition and it verified the drive to 100% no problems. I can go to C: in dos, but if I do anything, like type dir I get invalid media type. If I try scandisk c: from the a: drive it starts scandisk but says cannot scan drive c:
I tried running the bios flash from a disk in dos but it doesn't run in dos... So the disk might be fine, but maybe something with the motherboard bios??? Any further help greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I downloaded the bootdisk, fdisk and booted up with the bootdisk and ran fdisk.
I deleted the old partition, created a new primary dos partition and it verified the drive to 100% no problems. I can go to C: in dos, but if I do anything, like type dir I get invalid media type. If I try scandisk c: from the a: drive it starts scandisk but says cannot scan drive c:
I tried running the bios flash from a disk in dos but it doesn't run in dos... So the disk might be fine, but maybe something with the motherboard bios??? Any further help greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Hmm just found this over at the Asrock site....check the second question 
http://www.asrock.com/support/faq.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA
Forgot to mention, after you have repartitioned, you'll need to do a full format in Windows setup as nothing will work otherwise
You could format with the bootdisk but it'll only be FAT32 so no point really.
Anyway, hopefully the above link will shed some light on your problem.
http://www.asrock.com/support/faq.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA
Forgot to mention, after you have repartitioned, you'll need to do a full format in Windows setup as nothing will work otherwise
You could format with the bootdisk but it'll only be FAT32 so no point really.
Anyway, hopefully the above link will shed some light on your problem.
Last edited:
Thanks again. I did try and reformat with the windows CD after doing the partition but after staying at 0% for around 15 minutes I gave up and pulled the plug (not literally). Yes I know about that faq. I've been reading about ASRock all day :/
I did #1 (DRAM frequency 333) and later #2 (flexibility option), even though I have DDRII 667 RAM, but did not help.
I can't uppgrade the BIOS since the HD doesn't boot. Well I'm now installing Windows XP on an old IDE disk and that formats just fine. I'll try uppgrading BIOS, etc. and then give the SATA drive one more go. If it still doesn't work I might just RMA the drive in the hope that it's just a bad drive, but somehow I doubt it.
I did #1 (DRAM frequency 333) and later #2 (flexibility option), even though I have DDRII 667 RAM, but did not help.
I can't uppgrade the BIOS since the HD doesn't boot. Well I'm now installing Windows XP on an old IDE disk and that formats just fine. I'll try uppgrading BIOS, etc. and then give the SATA drive one more go. If it still doesn't work I might just RMA the drive in the hope that it's just a bad drive, but somehow I doubt it.
Well I used my old Western Digitial 80 GB IDE disk and it worked like a dream.
I've updated to the latest bios, 1.90, removed the IDE drive and tried the SATAII drive again. Well same thing. It's strange how it fails to detect the drive about every other bootup, then I reset and it boots. When it doesn't detect the the drive, the drive makes a repeating sound like its trying to read.
So maybe it is a bad drive after all... if anyone else has any last ideas please let me know. Otherwise I'll RMA this disk and hope the new one works better.
I've updated to the latest bios, 1.90, removed the IDE drive and tried the SATAII drive again. Well same thing. It's strange how it fails to detect the drive about every other bootup, then I reset and it boots. When it doesn't detect the the drive, the drive makes a repeating sound like its trying to read.
So maybe it is a bad drive after all... if anyone else has any last ideas please let me know. Otherwise I'll RMA this disk and hope the new one works better.
I'm not sure if the mobo can take both IDE and SATA drives at the same time but have you tried leaving the IDE drive as the main boot partition and installing the SATA drive as a slave? You may be able to format it from the IDE windows boot.
I do think you can use IDE and SATA together (I'd be disappointed if you can't), but if it can't format it from bootup I don't see how formatting it after starting windows will make a difference. Besides the fact that the bios only sees the drive one every other bootup makes it pretty obvious there is a problem... either with the mobo or the drive or with my setup...
I did leave it on to do a full format of the SATA over night and in the morning it greeted me with: "Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged". So maybe I will listen to microsoft and try having the drive replaced. Anyone else had SATA problems with this mobo?
I did leave it on to do a full format of the SATA over night and in the morning it greeted me with: "Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged". So maybe I will listen to microsoft and try having the drive replaced. Anyone else had SATA problems with this mobo?
Tried the disk in my work machine (a pentium D, dell machine with SATA).
As second drive it wasn't even recognised by the bios (might be a jumper issue?), as primary (and only) drive it was recognised in the bios, but when I boot with windows it says it can't find a drive. So I'd say the chances of there being a problem with the drive are pretty high.
As second drive it wasn't even recognised by the bios (might be a jumper issue?), as primary (and only) drive it was recognised in the bios, but when I boot with windows it says it can't find a drive. So I'd say the chances of there being a problem with the drive are pretty high.