feipoa wrote:

Were these ASRock boards really a hunk of junk? I am using an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 as my main computer now. The gaming performance benchmarks from Anandtech were pretty good. Anandtech reviews seemed pretty decent too. It uses the ULi chipset and also has AGP + PCI-E. It has this funny AGP-like AM2 CPU slot, but I use a standard socket 939 Opteron 180. I had to recap the motherboard recently as all the caps were starting to bulge one by one.

I was pretty happy with my 4CoreDual. It got me from the AthlonXP era to the C2D era pretty cheaply, reusing my AGP and DDR1. I used it for years and still have it in good condition. 😀 The performance was definitely less than other LGA775 solutions though.

"The impossible PC" :

Direct link : LINK
And Yes, I did put SATA controller in RAID mode to achieve this score 😀

CPU-z valid : http://valid.x86.fr/b8kibd

i remember i bought Asrock 775Dual VSTA 20$ from ebay as refurbished ... those moneyi gave, i still not believe how much they worthed 😮

These boards with c2d are good for maxing out voodoo5 benchmarks

http://valid.x86.fr/ij08g9

😀

7900 GS AGP 3DMark 01 SE score @ 3,74GHz 😀

feipoa wrote:

Were these ASRock boards really a hunk of junk? I am using an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 as my main computer now. The gaming performance benchmarks from Anandtech were pretty good. Anandtech reviews seemed pretty decent too. It uses the ULi chipset and also has AGP + PCI-E. It has this funny AGP-like AM2 CPU slot, but I use a standard socket 939 Opteron 180. I had to recap the motherboard recently as all the caps were starting to bulge one by one.

Yeah I had one of these boards from mid 2006 to September 2011. Absolutely rock solid reliable, which is why my current machine is using an Asrock board also 😀 Interesting to hear about the caps! I recently resurrected the machine with the Dual Sata board and ended up installing XP, Windows 7 and then Windows 10 and didn't have any issues other than having to use an old Vista driver for the network card.

feipoa wrote:

Were these ASRock boards really a hunk of junk? I am using an ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 as my main computer now. The gaming performance benchmarks from Anandtech were pretty good. Anandtech reviews seemed pretty decent too. It uses the ULi chipset and also has AGP + PCI-E. It has this funny AGP-like AM2 CPU slot, but I use a standard socket 939 Opteron 180. I had to recap the motherboard recently as all the caps were starting to bulge one by one.

The 939Dual-SATA2 is a kind of a cult board. It was very popular and reliable and also a decent performer. Later drivers and BIOS updates overcame the early SATA2-problems.
Love it. Also a great board to test GFXs.

Posting this from a 775Dual-VSTA board, updated to the latest modified BIOS from that german site and happily running a Core2Duo E6300 @ 1.8GHz and Windows 10! Indeed, it needs the PCI Express fix mentioned in the first thread. Doesn't seem to particularly like "fast boot". Another issue that had me baffled was that at some point after an update, it started this weird behavior: once in a while I'd switch it on and it would show the Windows logo, then display a light blue screen stating "Resuming from Hibernation" and afterwards power off instantly 🤣 The fix was this one (execute in command prompt run as admin):

1powercfg /hibernate off

I also have a 4CoreDual-VSTA board to test with a Q6600... 😈

psychz wrote:

I also have a 4CoreDual-VSTA board to test with a Q6600... 😈

From my 4CoreDual-SATA2 experience :
It will work (even G0 stepping kind), but OC'ing Q6600 CPU past 2,6GHz will probably be impossible. Unlocked CPU multiplier is required (since locked Quad Cores, have low-ish CPU multipliers).

Other thoughts :
Good thing about 65nm Quad's - They can operate @ 266MHz FSB (or 1066MHz "QPB").
45nm Quads don't have the option of going lower than 333MHz (or 1333MHz "QPB").
In spec sheet for them, there are only two BSEL options : 333MHz or 400MHz 🙁
Because of this, my QX9770 starts from 200MHz (or 800MHz "QPB") and it can go up to 235-239MHz (I didn't tested this enough yet, that's why it's a range of FSB frequencies).

To go 240MHz or higher, I have to enable [Flexibility Mode] option for RAM, but it has a side effect which makes quad core, a dual core in Windows 😒
Again - more tests are required, but maybe my 4GB RAM isn't good enough to do CL4 @ 667MHz (or chipset just can't do it).

Either way : Unlocked multi (or REALLY high but locked one) are a must on these MB's (if OC'ing is your thing).
Vcore BSEL mod also helps A LOT (if you have a high enough multiplier 😉).

EDIT : It was my RAM... 4.4.3.9 was too much 5.5.4.12 is much better 😀

Crysis "Low" @ Full HD = Min. FPS 100FPS+ 😁

MSI GTX 580 Lighting - confirmed working on 4CoreDual-SATA2 (L2.20 BIOS) :

agent_x007 wrote:

MSI GTX 580 Lighting - confirmed working on 4CoreDual-SATA2 (L2.20 BIOS) :

Oh wow, that's insane. 😲 I used to have one of those motherboards. I never liked it because it seemed slow and crashy. Maybe I just had a bad one.

How much does your setup score in 3DMark01? It would be interesting to see how much of a difference the chipset makes. My Q6700 @ 4GHz on P45 scores 74592. Keep in mind that 65nm @ 4GHz should be roughly equal to 45nm at 3.84GHz. So if there's any difference in our scores, it's probably caused by the chipset.

Q6700 4GHz, Asus P5Q3, GTX 680, XP-SP3:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

How much does your setup score in 3DMark01? It would be interesting to see how much of a difference the chipset makes. My Q6700 @ 4GHz on P45 scores 74592. Keep in mind that 65nm @ 4GHz should be roughly equal to 45nm at 3.84GHz. So if there's any difference in our scores, it's probably caused by the chipset.

I will go one step further 😁

3DMark 01 SE :
GTX 580 (850/4400) : 61811 pkt.

Radeon HD 5870 (850/4800) : 61317 pkt.

Radeon HD 3850 AGP (715/1818) : 60296 pkt.

Few things to keep in mind :
1) A GTX 580 OC (+10%), isn't exacly a GTX 680 😉
2) I use PCI-e x4 slot (or 1/8th of x16 2.0 bandwidth),
3) Your FSB is over 50% higher than mine (256MHz vs. 400MHz [effective : 1024MHz vs. 1600MHz]),
4) I assume your RAM frequency is over 2,3x higher (682MHz vs. 1600MHz [DDR2 vs. DDR3]),
5) The only tests in which GTX 680 is significantly faster than GTX 580 is Nature test (over 2x faster), and my setup is actually faster in Lobby "High" which is interesting to say the least 😀

Thanks for doing all of that! Really appreciate it. It's pretty crazy how even the AGP 3850 manages to hang in there with the much faster PCIe cards.

That VIA chipset is also doing much better than I thought it would. With the exception of Nature, your scores are extremely close to mine. I'm using DDR3-1600. Jeez, now I'm beginning to think that my system is under performing. The mighty P45 shouldn't be so dangerously close to a VIA chipset. 🤣

As for your Nature score, I think the PCIe x4 bus is what's holding it back. The GTX 580 is capable of far more than 480 fps. Even the slower GTX 560 can push 748 fps with an Opteron 185 @ 3.13.

PCI-e is probably it.
I changed drivers for yours (331.65) - still 480FPS in Nature
I also changed FSB : DRAM ratio to 3:5.
Still "no go" 🙁
I did get however a higher overall score in that last case 😁
Probably because of a little higher CPU clock.
Also CPU-z "gave up" naming a Yorkfield type CPU model with x17 multiplier... interesting 😀
62219 pkt.

Rhuwyn wrote:

I wonder if the hack to get a Socket 771 Xeon running n a 775 board will work with this board.

yes it works i have the intel xeon x5460 working at 1066 fsb and 2.53ghz .it works perfect at low speed

jordi wrote:

sorry for the old thread revive i have with this motherboard Asrock 775Dual VSTA and i installed bios 3.19a i use the ati hd5770 […]
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sorry for the old thread revive i have with this motherboard Asrock 775Dual VSTA and i installed bios 3.19a
i use the ati hd5770 and it runs great and also an ssd that made the system really smooth
for processor an e7600 3.06ghz i have windows 10 but when i had win7 this was my rating
ram is 3.3gb not 4gb, also i heard you can installed a xeon 5410(with mod ofc) and it works as quad but it
wont be at 2.33ghz probably less that 2.0 due to 1333fsb of the cpu.

you can put a xeon x5460 on this working at 2.53ghz . daksi filarako ?

Hi guys,
I'm running a 4core Dual Sata2 R2.0 / Quad Core 2 Exterme QX6700 / GTX 570 / 4GB DDR2 / SSD

I've upgraded my old HD3850 AGP only to fully benefit from video hw decoding and to play Silent Hunter 3 in better conditions. And yes, GTX 570 is damn fast, but the video quality in SH3 is RUBBISH - the watter in distance is flickering and shimmering like crazy, Ansiotopic Filtering is garbage. I'm considering sellig nVidia card and go back to ATi/AMD, HD6970 or HD6990.
As far as I know HD6970 will run fine, but a double GPU card as HD6990 would pair with this mobo? Any experience with 2 GPU monsters ?

Thank you.

I have the ''agp and ddr1 only'' version: Conroe865PE

It is a bad overclocker but put in a fast 800fsb conroe and you can at least go over 1066fsb giving a good 3ghz+. No complains about this board really, i usually use it as a testbench for fast agp cards.

I also had the 939dual sata2 board some years back and it was awesome, good board for little money. It was one of the few boards that had actually full speed for agp AND pci-e.
Used it first with a 6800le agp (unlocked, great little thing) and later with a 7800gt pci-e. Worked wonders.

meljor wrote:

I have the ''agp and ddr1 only'' version: Conroe865PE […]
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I have the ''agp and ddr1 only'' version: Conroe865PE

It is a bad overclocker but put in a fast 800fsb conroe and you can at least go over 1066fsb giving a good 3ghz+. No complains about this board really, i usually use it as a testbench for fast agp cards.

I also had the 939dual sata2 board some years back and it was awesome, good board for little money. It was one of the few boards that had actually full speed for agp AND pci-e.
Used it first with a 6800le agp (unlocked, great little thing) and later with a 7800gt pci-e. Worked wonders.

AsRock Conroe86PE is a completely different board though

Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual are based on the VIA PT880 Pro/Ultra which supports both DDR1 and DDR2, but only AGP 8x and PCI-E x4, the VIA Chipset was intented to be an AGP chipset at the begining if i remember, the chipset officially supports FSB 400/533/800/1066

AsRock Conroe86PE is an Intel 865PE motherboard with LGA 775, the Intel chipset dates from the Socket 478 and Pentium 4 era, but it works with later CPUs and Core 2 based CPUs like Pentium 4 6xx, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo and their Celeron/Pentium Variants, the i865PE is meant for 400/533/800 FSB, 1066 FSB was already out of spec for the chipset

exxocet wrote:

Hi guys, I'm running a 4core Dual Sata2 R2.0 / Quad Core 2 Exterme QX6700 / GTX 570 / 4GB DDR2 / SSD […]
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Hi guys,
I'm running a 4core Dual Sata2 R2.0 / Quad Core 2 Exterme QX6700 / GTX 570 / 4GB DDR2 / SSD

I've upgraded my old HD3850 AGP only to fully benefit from video hw decoding and to play Silent Hunter 3 in better conditions. And yes, GTX 570 is damn fast, but the video quality in SH3 is RUBBISH - the watter in distance is flickering and shimmering like crazy, Ansiotopic Filtering is garbage. I'm considering sellig nVidia card and go back to ATi/AMD, HD6970 or HD6990.
As far as I know HD6970 will run fine, but a double GPU card as HD6990 would pair with this mobo? Any experience with 2 GPU monsters ?

Thank you.

First I would recommend changing GPU drivers.
What OS are you using ?
I tested this board with 7900 GX2, and it worked fine (but PCI-e x4 hit could be seen on results).

PS : Dual GPU's will limit max. RAM (as in System memory), available to OS.
Nothing you can do about it : It's chipset limitation (ie. no Memory Remap).