ASRock ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 Motherboard Review

HighlandeR · 13 Jul 2006 at 20:50

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3779&s=1

For a 50 quid mobo its only 5fps slower then a Bad Axe/Intel 975 board £150+ board

Why hasnt Ocuk got em !

Mr Jones · 13 Jul 2006 at 20:59

Hmm, looks sweet for a cheap switch over to ConRoe...

james.miller · 13 Jul 2006 at 21:16

oh my that's going to make an awsome VFM platform

LanceCrossfire · 13 Jul 2006 at 21:31

if you intend for this board to be used with a single graphics card then yes it looks very cool, but ive had a similar motherboard before claiming Crossfire compatibility(with a second PCI express x4 slot, based on the 945 chipset, the ECS PF5 Extreme) and it would not run for the life of me, both of my X1900 correctly...

Cuchulain · 13 Jul 2006 at 21:37

According to that review, unless you solder a resistor onto the board there's no vcore adjustment

WJA96 · 13 Jul 2006 at 23:15

Cuchulain said:
According to that review, unless you solder a resistor onto the board there's no vcore adjustment

You don't need vCore adjustment for 80% of your overclocking requirements. Sure, if you want to get that E6600 to 3.8GHz you'll need a £150 board, but that board will do 3.6GHz (I've tried it

)

It is a good board for the money. Note that it's Intel 945 with ICH7R - this is a proper Intel chipset. It is a genuine bargain.

WJA96 · 14 Jul 2006 at 08:04

I'm not sure why, but I can get to FSB 400 on my motherboard (It won't boot over 358), but that review says 350 max and the reviewer hit some sort of block at 300 (possibly Intel capping the performance again).

If that is the case, then I would have to say that the best you'll ever be able to do is get to the equivalent of the next chip up ie. E6300->E6400, E6400->E6600 etc.

My BIOS is 0.9P date 4/19/2006 and the one on the ASRock website is 1.1 dated 6/14/2006 and it says first release.

I was really gung-ho about recommending these, but I'm not so sure now.

mr poo · 14 Jul 2006 at 09:19

W00t, glad I ordered this now. Now if by some small miracle my 6600 gets delivered today I'm good to go.

Cuchulain · 14 Jul 2006 at 09:30

WJA96 said:
You don't need vCore adjustment for 80% of your overclocking requirements. Sure, if you want to get that E6600 to 3.8GHz you'll need a £150 board, but that board will do 3.6GHz (I've tried it )

It is a good board for the money. Note that it's Intel 945 with ICH7R - this is a proper Intel chipset. It is a genuine bargain.

I only based it on trying to OC an A64 on an Asrock board, nearly every chip I've tried required some extra voltage, are Intel chips different?

Richdog · 14 Jul 2006 at 10:13

Was just about to post a thread about this board... looks sweet. Great price too. :eek:

WJA96 · 14 Jul 2006 at 16:14

Cuchulain said:
I only based it on trying to OC an A64 on an Asrock board, nearly every chip I've tried required some extra voltage, are Intel chips different?

All chips are different, surely?

Athlon 64's need the memory tweaked, P4's don't. All the P4's I've had will overclock very well on stock volts. To get the last little bit out, you need extra voltage, but generally the last you wanted on a Prescott was extra voltage and therefore extra heat!

The other problem everyone has is that all the currently available chips are engineering samples and most of the early motherboards are basically the same. Therefore, until someone actually gets their hands on real retail stuff, we won't know. As I said before, the ASRock boards I was given to play with had Conroe in gold writing on them. The current ones have it in white. My gold-lettered test board would do 400FSB, the white lettered ones only do 350 and apparently they carp out at 300FSB so I've reined myself back about being quite so positive about them.

I wouldn't discount the possibility of a performance enhancing BIOS update in the near future though.

maddness · 14 Jul 2006 at 17:51

WJA96 said:
You don't need vCore adjustment for 80% of your overclocking requirements. Sure, if you want to get that E6600 to 3.8GHz you'll need a £150 board, but that board will do 3.6GHz (I've tried it )

It is a good board for the money. Note that it's Intel 945 with ICH7R - this is a proper Intel chipset. It is a genuine bargain.

ive been using this with the conroe and it does not go over 300fsb

from 266 - 300 is a small overclock.

from 2.4 to 2.7

Pulseammo · 14 Jul 2006 at 18:00

Something confuses me about this board, it only has a 20pin power connector with the 4pin AUX, surely this means you're going to need a really strong 20pin PSU to handle the crossfire mode on this board. Seems slightly odd it has crossfire is what I'm getting at.

(About to go read the review now)

p4radox · 14 Jul 2006 at 18:10

This looks very very good. I'm a fan of uber cheap motherboards that clock well. Hopefully the 300 limit will be resolved or not an issue when people start buying them.

maddness · 14 Jul 2006 at 18:50

Pulseammo said:
Something confuses me about this board, it only has a 20pin power connector with the 4pin AUX, surely this means you're going to need a really strong 20pin PSU to handle the crossfire mode on this board. Seems slightly odd it has crossfire is what I'm getting at.

(About to go read the review now)

a molex plugs into the board to help with crossfire solutions.

gam3r · 14 Jul 2006 at 19:08

thanks for the link, i shall read with interest! anyone shed some light on its max fsb being 300?

and can anyone remind me of that other asrock mobo that can hit 3ghz easily? i think maddness might have used it not sure..

maddness · 14 Jul 2006 at 19:20

gam3r said:
thanks for the link, i shall read with interest! anyone shed some light on its max fsb being 300?

and can anyone remind me of that other asrock mobo that can hit 3ghz easily? i think maddness might have used it not sure..

^ lol

^

gam3r · 14 Jul 2006 at 19:26

damn, no dual channel on the twinS unlike the esata2xfire version. maddness try out clock gen please!

maddness · 14 Jul 2006 at 19:55

gam3r said:
damn, no dual channel on the twinS unlike the esata2xfire version. maddness try out clock gen please!

link me a 945 clockgen IC and i'll give it a try

WJA96 · 15 Jul 2006 at 07:24

<maddness> said:
ive been using this with the conroe and it does not go over 300fsb

from 266 - 300 is a small overclock.

from 2.4 to 2.7

The ones with the Gold writing go up to 400FSB and they don't max out at 300FSB.

It looks like Intel have locked the chipset up, like they did with the original 915 and 925 chipsets so you had to buy the next chip up to get any higher speeds. Those chipsets wouldn't boot over 225FSB, but it was done at Intel's instructions and eventually new BIOS were released that allowed those boards to be properly overclocked.

My boards (bought OEM from an OcUK competitor in Coventry) were very early R2.0 versions of the 775 TWINS and XFire775-eSATAII and they said Conroe in Gold lettering rather than the white lettered boards that are currently in the stores. If you check out my other threads you'll see I've been banging on about these for at least the last 8-10 weeks, but if mine were dealer demo's or something that I was sold because I was a crazy man demanding "anything you have in the store that's Conroe compatible" then I might well have been getting people's hopes up incorrectly which is why about 7 posts back, I've said be a bit careful with these new stock boards.

I take it you are testing with an ES chip, so that cannot be why mine will go past 300FSB and yours won't. Also - the one in the review wouldn't either. Unfortunately there are no pictures in the review to see what colour the lettering on the board is, but it's probably white.

Sorry if this is confusing anyone.

I would try it out again with the new 1.1 BIOS, but I can't as I have had to give my loan chip back so that other people in the company can play with it.