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

bilston · 9 Oct 2006 at 09:23

Try to scandisk it one last time now that it is formatted. If that fails, it's RMA time.

Dancer · 9 Oct 2006 at 10:25

No scandisk wont scan it. I also set the jumpers to make it a slave and booted with it as second SATA drive. Well as soon as windows detects the drive it freezes windows completely, so I think it is safe to say this disk is caput!

Thanks for your help. On the other hand, once I ditched the broken SATA disk and used IDE the 775Dual-VSTA Conroe with 2GB Geil ram setup is working great. Not done any benchmarks yet but it does seem very fast, I'll wait with any overclock until I have a new working SATA drive.

bilston · 9 Oct 2006 at 10:30

Heh, yeah theyre nice boards for the price. And conroe is bloody fast youre right

Just reading over in the graphics forum about those 7900GTO's that are going for silly money (£180 for 512mb GTX!) and wondering if I should grab now while theyre still available ;D

Hmmm choices choices

Darg · 9 Oct 2006 at 12:56

Can anyone tell me if there's any likelihood of the Asrock board being able to change the multiplier settings on the conroe chips in the future? Knowing that they can be pushed to almost 3ghz yet only getting 2.1 would annoy me

Dancer · 9 Oct 2006 at 18:20

I like this board, it works very well with my mix of old and new hardware, although I have yet to try overclocking. All my problems were todo with a faulty disk, something I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt now, borrowing a SATAII Seagate 250 GB from work which formatted without any of the problems with the previous drive. Just hope the replacement for my RMA will work as well.

ShaunBrewer · 9 Oct 2006 at 19:51

Darg said:
Can anyone tell me if there's any likelihood of the Asrock board being able to change the multiplier settings on the conroe chips in the future? Knowing that they can be pushed to almost 3ghz yet only getting 2.1 would annoy me

Darg,

As a budget board - this is great - if you want to re-use existing DDR1 and AGP I don't think this can be touched.

However your overlock will be limited.

The best I could get was 7 x 312 with this board an e6300 and cosair XMS 3200 C2 ram - or about 17% the chip would go much higher.

Shaun

P.S. If someone is getting much better please point me at the thread as I have missed it :eek:

Darg · 10 Oct 2006 at 16:45

Well that will just have to do me until I get a new mobo but that won't be until I have my RAM, HDs and gfx upgraded. I do like how this board will allow me to upgrade over time.

bilston · 10 Oct 2006 at 16:49

ShaunBrewer said:
Darg,

The best I could get was 7 x 312 with this board an e6300 and cosair XMS 3200 C2 ram - or about 17% the chip would go much higher.

Shaun

P.S. If someone is getting much better please point me at the thread as I have missed it

That is a very good clock for this board m8. Stuck mine at 310 and it didnt post :/

"andy" · 10 Oct 2006 at 19:04

finally got my setup with this mobo working( broken ram

)

my old board was damaged when my pc had an accident luckily everything else was rescued

am using an intel805 untill i get a conroe along with my 6800gs agp card and 512mb old school style ram :s

happily booted the 805 at 3.3ghz first time and dual primed it for a few hours but i think im gunna need more volts to go higher

still a great budget system though and atleast i can slowly upgrade as i afford it.

excellent boards on a budget

ShaunBrewer · 10 Oct 2006 at 19:53

bilston said:
That is a very good clock for this board m8. Stuck mine at 310 and it didnt post :/

What bios version?

I should be getting an e6600 in a couple of weeks - I will post my results with this board here.

I am going to sell the e6300 and buy a new chip e6600? + better board in the new year (probably) - once everything has settled down re chipsets.

Shaun

bilston · 10 Oct 2006 at 20:21

ShaunBrewer said:
What bios version?

I should be getting an e6600 in a couple of weeks - I will post my results with this board here.

I am going to sell the e6300 and buy a new chip e6600? + better board in the new year (probably) - once everything has settled down re chipsets.

Shaun

Im on the latest 1.90 version. With the E6600 you are 99% guaranteed to get the same as me, 2.7Ghz at least, depending on what FSB your mobo manages.

Darg · 11 Oct 2006 at 17:10

I don't see the point of swapping your 6300 for a 6600 if you're going to be getting a board on which you can change the multiplier and FSB higher. The E6300 has been shown to be able to get almost as fast if not faster then the X6800 stock speeds.

They're all essentially the same chip just with different mulitpliers.

I've ordered an E6300 and will keep that for the forseeable future. My upgrade path will most likely be:

2x1GB DDR2 RAM to replace my 2x512mb DDR1 RAM.
SATA Harddrives to replace my 1x80GB and 2x40GB IDE drives.
DX10 PCI-E graphics card.
New motherboard and overclock the CPU and RAM to their highest.

Then I'll be ok til that gets old.

Greenboi · 11 Oct 2006 at 21:24

Im gonna get one of these boards soon coupled with a E6600, and soon a set of 2gb ram, ddr2 dual channel

Only downside is the PCI-E slot, its not as future-proof as i believed, seeing as the PCIe slot only runs at half what the agp slot runs at....lucky i have a AGP 7800GS OC

so i wont be losing out... in a few years i will upgrade my mobo do a crossfire one, and keep the E6600 when i need a new gpu (dx10 maybe?

)

ShaunBrewer · 12 Oct 2006 at 09:12

Darg said:
I don't see the point of swapping your 6300 for a 6600 if you're going to be getting a board on which you can change the multiplier and FSB higher. The E6300 has been shown to be able to get almost as fast if not faster then the X6800 stock speeds.

They're all essentially the same chip just with different mulitpliers.

I've ordered an E6300 and will keep that for the forseeable future. My upgrade path will most likely be:

2x1GB DDR2 RAM to replace my 2x512mb DDR1 RAM.
SATA Harddrives to replace my 1x80GB and 2x40GB IDE drives.
DX10 PCI-E graphics card.
New motherboard and overclock the CPU and RAM to their highest.

Then I'll be ok til that gets old.

The e6600 has double the cache 4mb and until I get a new board the e6600 will give me better performance on this board.

In the new year when I get a new board - the processor will depend on availability / price - those 4 core chips might be £100 :lol:

Darg · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:40

From the benchmarks that I've seen the 4mb cache doesnt really give that much of a performance gain atleast not in games. A 6400 at the same clocks as a 6600 will only be a percent or two off performace wise.

Greenboi you will only notice a small (5% at most) difference between PCI-E 4X and PCI-E 16X performance. It would still beat AGP cards though I will be staying with my 7600GT AGP for a while.

Ice Tea · 17 Oct 2006 at 10:42

How is the Northbridge heatsink mounted. ?

Is it pin or hook ?

bilston · 17 Oct 2006 at 11:36

Ice Tea said:
How is the Northbridge heatsink mounted. ?

Is it pin or hook ?

Pin.

Ice Tea · 17 Oct 2006 at 11:37

Thanks

ScoobyDoo · 18 Oct 2006 at 13:45

Im going to be getting one of these boards and a 6300.
I also need a new power supply, what 'cheapish' one would you recommend?, or a new case with built in power supply (smaller the better)

Darg · 18 Oct 2006 at 19:17

Well its not small but I have a Titan 550 that comes with a 550W PSU that has been working great for me so far. I love the case it's a real monster. Great air flow through it.