**The ASrock 939dual-SATA2 (ULi M1695) thread**

Angilion said:
IIRC, WinXP SP2 prevents any non-MS AGP driver (for the motherboard, not the card itself) being installed anyway.

Have you set the SATA driving to strong in the BIOS? That enabled this board to detect my Samsung SATA2 drive. On a cold boot, anyway - it very rarely detects it on a reboot.
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Well I've just downloaded the latest ATI drivers and in Smartgart when I test it says I can use AGP X8 so I select that click apply it, then I restart and when windows loads the screen flicks off a few times. After that I go into Smartgart again and it still says my AGP setting is set to off even though I can select X8 and its set to X8 in the bios.

I can still play half-life 2 if I set it to medium but BF2 won't play chugs like hell and textures dissappear etc.
 
Does anybody know if this board supports digital audio out? Is there something in the menu for the drivers that lets you turn one of the audio outs into SPDIF?
 
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I havent seen any digial outs on this board/well the reviews havent shown any output yet!

Someone with the acutal board maybe able to check on the back though...
 
I know there's no digital out on the board, but I was wondering if there was a setting in the drivers or something that would make on of the ports it does have into a digital out. I can do this with my SB Live Value, I was just hoping you could do it on this thing too... It's kind of a make or break thing, if it has it I'll buy it, if it doesn't I'll wait.
 
After reading the Toms hardware review its a bit daughting cos it shows it somewhat behind Nforce4 boards a 15fps gap in Farcry !

Other reviews dont show that like Ocw and Anands....

Otherwise I woulda loved this board myself.

Q. Can a X2 work straight out of the box on this board?

Oh and its good to see the latest bios fixes the cold boot issues.
 
HighlandeR said:
After reading the Toms hardware review its a bit daughting cos it shows it somewhat behind Nforce4 boards a 15fps gap in Farcry !

Other reviews dont show that like Ocw and Anands....

Otherwise I woulda loved this board myself.

Q. Can a X2 work straight out of the box on this board?

Oh and its good to see the latest bios fixes the cold boot issues.
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I have seen people reporting running an X2 on this board, straight out the box, with BIOS P1.10 (the one it currently ships with). I have not tried it and I do not know anyone who has. If you buy an X2 for me, I'll cheerfully try it myself and let you know :) A possible outcome is that the X2 works as a single core until you flash a new BIOS. I suggest you ask Asrock directly if no-one can say for certain from experience on here.

The THG review is anomalous. I'd really like to know why. My tentative explanation is that the BIOS defaulted to very conservative settings. The shipping BIOS (P1.10) is conservative by default, as it was a stability release. Roughly, 1.00 was fast but unstable, 1.10 (current shipping) was stable but slower and with all overclocking settings removed, 1.20 has the stability of 1.10 and the speed and options of 1.00.
 
Mister Me said:
I know there's no digital out on the board, but I was wondering if there was a setting in the drivers or something that would make on of the ports it does have into a digital out. I can do this with my SB Live Value, I was just hoping you could do it on this thing too... It's kind of a make or break thing, if it has it I'll buy it, if it doesn't I'll wait.
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Would it be more expensive to buy this dirt cheap board and a soundcard? This board and an Audigy2 Value would be ~£85, which is the price of many motherboards by themselves. You'd then get a pretty decent 7.1 soundcard with digital out (I think - I haven't checked for myself) that would take a fair bit of load off the CPU, have much more powerful audio processing than onboard sound and probably have higher quality output too. If you have a spare PCI slot with this board (it has 3), that strikes me as a good idea.
 
Angilion said:
I have seen people reporting running an X2 on this board, straight out the box, with BIOS P1.10 (the one it currently ships with). I have not tried it and I do not know anyone who has. If you buy an X2 for me, I'll cheerfully try it myself and let you know :) A possible outcome is that the X2 works as a single core until you flash a new BIOS. I suggest you ask Asrock directly if no-one can say for certain from experience on here.

The THG review is anomalous. I'd really like to know why. My tentative explanation is that the BIOS defaulted to very conservative settings. The shipping BIOS (P1.10) is conservative by default, as it was a stability release. Roughly, 1.00 was fast but unstable, 1.10 (current shipping) was stable but slower and with all overclocking settings removed, 1.20 has the stability of 1.10 and the speed and options of 1.00.
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Yeah I did check the bios dates also, id guess your correct since Id prefer to stick with Anandtechs review showing the Asrock board competiting/overtaking the nforce4 boards tbh even if its within 5fps + or - its nothing, it was just that farcry benchie! but Anands seems fine here:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524&p=9

Now lets see tommorow if the Crossfire boards are better then the rest of the pack ;)
 
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Angilion said:
Would it be more expensive to buy this dirt cheap board and a soundcard? This board and an Audigy2 Value would be ~£85, which is the price of many motherboards by themselves. You'd then get a pretty decent 7.1 soundcard with digital out (I think - I haven't checked for myself) that would take a fair bit of load off the CPU, have much more powerful audio processing than onboard sound and probably have higher quality output too. If you have a spare PCI slot with this board (it has 3), that strikes me as a good idea.
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I think I'm going to do this... There goes another $60 though...

Adds firewire and high quality sound though so I guess it's worth it. I'm ordering tomorrow evening I think.
 
I think that the Audigy 2 Value doesn't have the Firewire port. I don't see the card on a quick look at Creative's website, but from memory I think that's one of the things they took off to turn the Audigy2 into Audigy2 Value.
 
spell said:
I've got an 3800 X2 in mine and it's fine. Clocked at 2.5Ghz, nice and stable.
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So it does work X2 out the box, thats good to hear... I originaly heard some guys having to put an A64 in there to boot up and then update bios/guess the new shipping boards took care of that which is good.
 
Oh and if Ocuk are watching this thread.... Your competition are starting to snap up these popular boards ;)

Im gonna wait and see how ATI boards are, think crossfires previews are due soon or this week.
 
Angilion said:
I think that the Audigy 2 Value doesn't have the Firewire port. I don't see the card on a quick look at Creative's website, but from memory I think that's one of the things they took off to turn the Audigy2 into Audigy2 Value.
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There's a ZS that has the firewire and I'm gonna get that.
 
Is it worth buying this board as a budget 939 board?
I'm kinda deciding between this and either an ASUS or EPOX board, but am put off by the Ali chipset.
 
I'd say it's an excellent budget board but I would, I've got one....but if you want to seriously overclock; I'd think twice.
 
spell said:
I'd say it's an excellent budget board but I would, I've got one....but if you want to seriously overclock; I'd think twice.
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it think it overclocks pretty well tbh only reason why i havent put my 3700+on higher cause im waiting for my new memory :)
 
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