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

ron3003 said:
Hello guys, first post here so be gentle.
Like many others I'm looking at this mobo as a stepping stone to a full blown pci-e ddr2 system in the future. I'd be coupling it with a conroe e6600 2.4ghz keeping my old galaxy 6600gt and 1gig kingston pc3200 400mhz ram. The price of around £250 probably means the wife will still be speaking to me afterwards.
I know that it would be a lot quicker for video encoding and basic number crunching but my query is really about gaming of which I do a fair bit. My current rig is a P4 s478 3.0e ghz processor unclocked in an Intel D865gbf mobo. Will I be taking a step backwards initially performance wise ie; fps and stuttering because of the conroes lower 2.4ghz or will the new architecture used actually improve things .
I'd be hoping to increase the fsb on the asrock to get around 2700ghz out of the e6600, does that sound feasible?
Your thoughts please hopefully from someone who's made a similar upgrade.
Thanks.
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First up, welcome to the forums!

Going from a P4 to a Conroe would see a sizeable jump in performance. I went from a 4800x2 overclocked to 2.7+ghz and noticed a difference.

Then theres the 2nd core instead of HT that you have, which gives greater advantages you already know about ;) Everything will feel snappier, probably not as much as if you were coming from a chip without HT but its there.

I say go for it, and 2.7ghz out of the conroe should be doable, its capable on mine :)

Edit: it does depend on what games you play whether you'll see a performance increase or not, being on a 6600gt. Games that are CPU limited such as HL2/CS:S etc should see good improvements, others that are GPU limited already, wont show that much. All depends on what you play.
 
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Just got myself a ocuk 7900GS and it works fine with this board, got the board running on a E6300 at 300fsb with 2gb PC3200 ram, makes it very fast machine, ok so i cant overclock the processor as high as other motherboards but

1) The motherboard only cost £36
2) I can still use my old DDR1 2gb RAM

and its fast enough for me, runs all the games ive got maxed out no problem :)
 
Thanks for the replies fellas, guess I'll go ahead and take the first step to 21st century computing and get the e6600 and Asrock 775dual-vsta.
Eventually I'll be working towards a something like a Gigabyte DS4 and the Geil 800mhz ram and a decent pci-e gfx card but that probably wont happen until DX10 cards are the norm. I'll probably pick up the bits over time so I dont incur the wrath of 'she who must be obeyed' :D
 
jas72 said:
I'm having HUGE problems with my board

check out my thread here..

Anyone else running a 7600GT PCIe on this mobo. I'm afraid it might be one of the card that aren't compatible.... I knew I should have bought the X1900XT :(

I will try an install with my AGP card tonight then i'll have to see if I can find a shop to test my PCIe card.
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can anyone confirm if the 7600GT pcie will or wont work with this motherboard.. it better bloody work
 
Just wiped my c drive and have a fresh install of XP working. *swats away an autoupdate window*

Now to install COD2 and see if the problem still persists with the onboard sound. If it does I'll have to try the audigy 2 again.
 
I'll update my BIOS when I get home on thursday and see if it makes any performance difference.

Anybody else try out the new BIOS yet?

btw managed to get my board running at 300FSB stable at last. Required a complete format of the harddrive and winXP reinstall though. Sound problem isn't as bad but still crashes occasionally in Oblivion and COD2.

I'm going to try the Audigy 2 again and see if it has the same problems.

I haven't tried bringing it over 300 with this new install yet but I will try setting the command rate of the DDR1 ram to 1T and see if it still runs stable.

To get it to run stable at 300FSB try setting your DDR1 RAM to the speed lower then its actual spec. I set my 200mhz ram to 166 and it's now oced from that to 187 with lower timings. That improved stability a lot.

I tried the VAGP pencil mod and I could get the machine to boot at higher FSBs but it wasnt even as stable at 295 as it was without the mod. Also be careful if your graphics card is already running hot as mine jumped 5c on idle from 40C to 45C.
 
Got my Asrock 775 DUAL-VSTA with C2D E6600 up and running, just flashed it to 2.10 bios. First question is what app are you guys using to monitor temps? I've upped the fsb to 295 and XP loads and runs fine and I've run FEAR for a few minutes no problem but I dont want to leave it running too long without any idea what's going on with my temps.

Edit;
Right I,m using hwinfo32 and now running at 300mhz fsb (2700mhz). CPU is 37-43c depending on load and my DDR 400 is reported to be at 187.5mhz 2.5 3 3 7. Is this ok? When I set memory to 200mhz from it's auto detected setting of 166mhz my mouse started getting jerky and the onboard audio was cracking up. It's been stable all evening after setting memory back to auto and gave no problems with a couple of lengthy sessions of Flight Simulator X and Fifa 07.
 
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Use CoreTemp to get the real on-die temps of the C2D. Though your temps seem okay. CT is usually just about 10C higher then the temps from HWinfo or Speedfan.

Personally I use Speedfan and CoreTemp to check temps. Your memory timings are the same as mine and mine have proved stable so far. You might want to try stress testing using the dual core orthos build or two prime95s. If you go with the two prime95s then set one to Small torture test and the other to blend. Both on blend would start paging like mad and slow it all down.

It all looks good for you so far. I'm going to flash to the latest bios and try pushing mine a little further.
 
Just received my board and 6600, was wondering if the below graphics card will work with this board?


BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-016-BG)

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
That card will work deadly raccoon.

Also, the latest bios is the best for me so far. Overclocking is stable now for me whereas before the screen would slow to a crawl when windows loaded and eventually crash with my GTO.

on 290 fsb at the moment, will try more later.
 
deadly raccoon said:
Just received my board and 6600, was wondering if the below graphics card will work with this board?


BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-016-BG)

Thanks in advance for any help.
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Why would you buy an AGP card, when you can get a PCIe card for less and it will fit your upgrade path better?
 
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