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

[melchy]

I've got it working now, it was the power supply. Seems quite a good board to me.

 

[Randell]

its a great board for £50 if you've still got an AGP card. Does look like it needs a good PSU though.

 

[mp260767]

topped out at only 280 on my 146, not even 1.45v would get it to post above 280 and be stable .

found a new overclock checker cpu-z v1.31, tried to run that when i'd gone to 290 and i got a bsod, rebooted and ran occt it failed within 2 minutes saying system was unstable, summat that only took cpu-z about 5 seconds

any ideas on what i can do to just confirm its my memory thats the problem ?

running the ocwbeta2 bios so the mem can go down to 100fsb if needs be to help check the clock.


thx, mark.......

 

[barnsta]

hello asrock owners, I have had this board for a week and am happy with it but the first boot screen (i think must be the memory test) takes something like 30secs, is this normal? I have asked asrock Netherlands to look into it.

Also what would be the best settings to overclock, I have amd64 venice 3500 3 x 512mb corsair value select 3200/400.

I am very confused about this overclocking stuff! I have bios flashed to 1.4.

Do i turn the multiplier down from 11x200? to something like 9x266 to give me 2400? Also what should i keep the memory settings at maybe auto as i know that ram isn't very good.

Please help me with this one. The system is watercooled and graphics card is gainward 6800gt ultra

thanks so much

 

[GingaNinja]

Hi barnsta. Try disabling the floppy in the boot options list. Regarding OCing, you'd be best to try upping the HTT (fsb) as far as it'll go. You'll prolly need to reduce the ram multiplier somewhat to keep it around its specified speed.

Ginga

 

[barnsta]

hi thanks

yeh i have floppy disabled. Ref slow boot times, it happens on the screen that gives options of f2 or f11

It could be a memory problem, i have asrock on the case but probably won't get an answer until next week. will keep you all informed, if any one has any ideas please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Xeon]

this board does appear to suffer from cold start and slow boot problems - this may include from a 30sec or more delay to post to very slow windows xp load times or a complete failure to post after flashing the bios.

i feel asrock/ami need to do a few bios updates to resolve these issues but in the meantime if you are suffering from these symtoms there are a few things you can do:

1. Make sure you have a decent power supply of 450watts+
2. For failure to post after bios flash, remove all boards (except video of course) + memory modules except for one stick. With more than 2 sticks it is particularly bad.
3. Power on - off several times and wait a few mins between each one.
4. For slow windows load times re-distribute the usb devices mice, keyboards etc. to different hubs - this may help or reset the bios pnp to make sure there are no interupt conflicts.

This board has a great specification for its price (under £40 + vat at one UK supplier!) and once the bios gets sorted will give quite a few nforce4 boards at more than twice the price a run for thier money - well done Asrock

 

[melchy]

Is anyone elses hypertransport running at 800 rather than a 1000. I have everything set at auto. I can get it to run at 1000 but if i do my memory speed drops from 200 to around 137 for some odd reason.

 

[faust]

Hi, I'm new to this board and I have this wierd prob with this mobo. I have win xp pro sp1a and everythin' is running smooth except games i.e Quake 4, HL2 has these same kind of probs: polygons flicker, pixel errors, textures with wierd colours. If anyone has a solution to my prob it would be great.

I have tried following: Asrock AGP drivers, Uli AGP drivers, different vga drivers, tried to play with agp settings in bios, and mem settings it seems nothing I do has any effects on games, alltho windows runs smooth and fast, dxdiags d3dtest runs smooth. I'm pretty sure there is nothing wrong with my graphics card for it has runned fine for a year in my old sys. I'm wonder if Win XP 64bit edition could be any better..

sys specs:
ASrock 939dual-SATA2 1.20BIOS
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
2xA-Data 512Mb 400Mhz 2.5CL (V-Data Chip)
Chaintech Geforce FX 5900 256Mb - AGP
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
No SATA/SATAII Drives
Samsung SP160 160Gb IDE-drive

P.S. I'm very happy with this board if I just could solve this little prob, if anyone has experienced these kind of probs and could help me out with this one

 

[Xeon]

i guess u made sure that u installed the Uli integrated drivers before the fx5900 drivers.
Make sure usb legacy support is disabled in the bios - u could try running Agp at 4x or latest 1.4 bios.

Check out this thread http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=1727528 also a fx5900

 

[faust]

hmm.. disabled legacy support for usb, made agp to run at 4x, agp aperture must be 128 and now everything runs smooth.. games goes pretty well.. alltho I wonder how much performance impact I get from dropping agp from 8x to 4x?

 

[Xeon]

It is not as bad it sounds, the difference between 4X & 8X is minimal - but dont take my word for it; run some of your own benches to find out

 

[faust]

yeah, thanks for hints .. At least I survive until I can get my hands on that new X800 GTO

 

[barnsta]

Just to let you know that Asrock got back to me, i was having problems with slow boot up times. They told me it is a problem with one of my usb devices and sure enough when i unpluged my webcam, it booted up a treat!

am impressed with the support and the board, now i just to figure out how to o/c the thing.

cheers

 

[Xeon]

interesting that your webcam effected the asrock's windows start up times; i had the same problem with a 4 way usb hub which worked perfectly on my old NF7.
Makes me think it may not be the usb device thats at fault but something to do with the loading or the way asrock manages the usb ports. Could it be that thier usb2 implementation is not compatible with some older usb1 devices?

 

[barnsta]

I was thinking that too, i have a 4 port usb 2.0 hub, i'll check to see if that works when i get home from boring ole work.

 

[Kinetic]

So is this board worth buying yet or are there still issues with it ? if i decide to buy one am i better waiting for another updated bios as i will be overclocking a opty 146 on it

 

[Magic_x_uk]

same here Kinetic, i have one in my spare room waiting for the opteron 146.....Just hope this board will be ok, i was checking on these forums and people seemed to think it was a great board for overclocking (with a opteron i hope) and now there seems to be problems...

Im a novice at overclocking, so this will be my Virgin motherboard on overclocking.

 

[Devious]

Ive just built my new rig with this board and an 146 opty cooled with a arctic freezer 64 pro. I can get to 2.85Ghz prime stable @ 36deg which isnt bad for a £150 bundle. Im guessing the 1.45v vcore is my problem as temps are nice. I may buy some conductive paint and attempt the volt mod tomorrow


rich

 

[Kinetic]

Ive just built my new rig with this board and an 146 opty cooled with a arctic freezer 64 pro. I can get to 2.85Ghz prime stable @ 36deg which isnt bad for a £150 bundle. Im guessing the 1.45v vcore is my problem as temps are nice. I may buy some conductive paint and attempt the volt mod tomorrow
rich

How easy was it to set up the new board from scratch ? did you have to format if so did you run into any problems with drivers or anything ?