Next you will be writing in complaining that you have bought it and your Gfx overclock is unstable and you don't know why.
"A couple of problems with this board. I'm running on stock with DDR400 and an E4500 BIOS 1.60 VIA drivers5.13A.
After a few days operation the system failed to boot after POST. Just a black screen. I managed to get the system back up using a Silicon Image SATA 1 controller. I am using a Maxtor SATA2 drive.
ASROCK suggested
Please go to BIOS setup and recheck if the option “SATA Option Mode” was set correctly.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Please adjust the jumper of your HDD as SATA1 mode.
2. Disable the “Spread Spectrum” in BIOS.
3. Change a known good SATA cable to try.
4. Try another SATA HDD if possible.
I disabled spread spectrum and managed to boot OK
Now I am having keyboard problems. It keeps missing keystrokes. This has taken me 5 mins to type.
Any ideas? "
"Well, as similiar to a lot of other people's here, my 4CoreDual-Sata2 board also seems to have a life of it's own, never ending to surprise me with it's extremely quirky behavior. Here goes my experience:
I've tried the board with both DDR and DDR2, with two different AGP cards, IDE hard drive, SATA hard drive, and with and without any peripherals. No matter what I do, I still receive problems when trying to overclock this past certain points. I'll explain:
DDR: I have some PC4000 (DDR500) that's rated to run at 250mhz FSB. However, the closest I can get to that rated speed is a system FSB speed of 240Mhz, with the memory running at the same speed (DDR400, which gave it a 1:1 ratio). So, logically, I tried to lower the memory speed to DDR333 (6:5 FSB to Mem ratio). No go, the system wouldn't POST. At this point I was fairly disappointed, thinking perhaps my E2160 CPU was limited to a measly 360Mhz overclock. After fiddling with the settings, I managed to get the system to run stably at 285Mhz FSB, but I had to use the 266 memory speed (4:3 FSB to Mem ratio), which ran the memory at 186Mhz. Anything above 285Mhz and the system would freeze upon loading Windows. At this point, I think i've hit the CPU or MB's voltage limits and would need to do some modding to go any higher. I would happy with this level of overclock if only I could get the DDR memory to run at at least 333Mhz speed (which, with the 6:5 ratio, would run it at 233Mhz). I've tried setting timings manually according to SPD timings reported in CPU-Z. I've also set both AGP and DRAM voltages to High. The system just doesn't like running the FSB higher than 240Mhz with the memory being anywhere near that speed.
DDR2: It gets even weirder with DDR2. I had two sticks of DDR2-667 memory. Unlike with the DDR, I was unable to get anywhere near 285Mhz FSB. The maximum I could stably get the system was 260Mhz FSB, using a 1:1 ratio. However, what was really odd is that I could easily get the system up to 250Mhz FSB using the 3:4 memory ratio (which ran the Memory at 333Mhz. So obviously the DDR2 memory can run as fast as it's rated to run. It's just that I can't get the system to run faster than 260Mhz with DDR2 memory, no matter what ratios I select. The only way I could get the system to run at 1:1 memory ratio with DDR2 was enabling the Flexibility option. Using the flexibility option, however, I had to manually set timings as it didn't automatically adjust those as I raised the FSB.
Like I mentioned, I know other people have had similiar weird experiences with their SATA2 boards, but there also a lot of people out there who have seemingly easily got theirs up to 300Mhz+ FSB speeds. That's such a radical difference of performance that I have to suspect i'm missing some BIOS setting of some sort. I've even considered performing the BSEL mod on my CPU to trick the MB into thinking it's a 266Mhz FSB cpu. I was hoping by doing that the MB may radically adjust the way it does it's memory timings, or whatever setting that may be holding me back by manually adjusting the FSB. I KNOW my E2160 can run at 266Mhz speeds, as it can run at 285Mhz using DDR1 memory. I think i'll try increasing my CPU's volts as well, since the mod required for that is very similiar to BSEL's and just as easy to do."
http://forums.anandtech.com/message...ORDFRM=&STARTPAGE=7&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear
"
- Supports Dual Channel DDRII667 (DDRII x 2 DIMM slots) and DDR400 (DDR x 2 DIMM slots)
- Untied Overclocking : During Overclocking, FSB enjoys better margin due to fixed - AGP/PCIE/ PCI Buses
- 1 x PCI Express Graphics slot
- 1 x AGP 8X slot"
If you don't need a board to do both DDR & DDR2 then don't buy one,
"There are a few mbs out there that support AGP and DDR2 like the Asus P5WD2-P Intel 955 Socket 775 ATX Motherboard it supports AGP and DDR2. I know theres one that has not an 4x not an 8x but a 16x AGP slot on it.. "
http://forums.devshed.com/motherboards-106/ddr2-and-agp-254479.html
