OCWorkbench Exclusive Review : ASRock 775Dual-VSTA with Intel Core 2 Extreme

[bluetooth]

ASRock 775Dual-VSTA

The Dual series is really a very good choice for those who still owns an older AGP card. Last August, we reviewed the first such board for the Pentium 4 LGA775. It was the 775Dual-880Pro. One year later, ASRock reintroduces an improved version of this board based on the same VIA PT880 Pro chipset. This mainboard is similar to the 775Dual-880, it supports both AGP and PCIe interfaces. It can also hook up to 4 monitors to do surround video.

In additional to supporting both graphics interface standards, it also support up to 2 slots of DDR2-667 or 2 slots of DDR400 memory. The chipset used supports all series of Intel LGA775 CPUs including the highest end Intel Core2 Duo Extreme (Conroe), the X6800 that runs clks 2.93GHz (1066FSB).
This new version also is VISTA Ready and comes with HDA 8ch audio using ALC888 codec. The board also comes with a HDMI_SPDIF connector which allows audio to be output through a HDMI graphics card. Using 8237A south bridge, it supports SerialATA 1.5Gb/s, RAID 0,1, JBOD, SATA HDD Hotplug, plus 2 ports of ATA 133. There is also 10/100 PCI Ethernet LAN on board.
For those who loves mild overclocking, the board has options to fix the PCI and PCIe bus so that it won't be affected by the overclocking of the FSB.

[garbage]

i'm testing this board at the moment and i noticed that the command rate setting is not working. the chipset always works with 2T, even when set to 1T.

performance is not that bad with 2T, but it could be better with a working 1T mode. i don't blame the chipset as 1T works fine on my p4dual-880pro with the same pt880 pro northbridge.
tried with bios p1.00 and p1.30.

@bluetooth: do you have the same problem with your 775dual-vsta?

[bluetooth]

Yes. same issue with p1.20

[bluetooth]

review is online.

[Nullvoid]

Nice review Bluetooth! It's funny how even with just pci-e x4 the 775dual-vsta can almost keep up with these other boards. This seems like the perfect board for me and will give me possibly the weakest system in existence based around a conroe(it would be paired with a radeon 9600LE agp) :)

I did have a question though. Do you know if the 1T command rate instabilities still exist for the latest bios(1.40)?

[bluetooth]

I did not test with p1.4 . I tested with P1.20.

[Nullvoid]

OK cool, it's not a showstopper having to use 2T but I still wanted to ask. They seem to be releasing the bios updates pretty often so I assume they'll have most stability issues ironed out before I can find somewhere in the UK that sells it.

[robinhull]

quite a few UK shops have this board on sale, try Microdirect.co.uk for under £40inc vat.

Rob H

[garbage]

my results with p1.30:
DDR-II 533: 1T OK, but one crash (wouldn't give too much about it)
DDR-II 667: 1T bios setting is ignored, always works with 2T
DDR 400: 1T OK, no problems

can't test p1.40 atm, cpu is missing.

[Nullvoid]

Apologies if this is bad form but here goes.

I just wanted to give a link to another review of the 775dual-vsta. It was one of a number of mobos that anandtech included in its recent conroe buyers guide article (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=10). It performed pretty amazing in my eyes, and even with a 7900gtx in the pci-e slot, it didn't get throttled so badly by being only x4 speed.

For such a cheap price this mobo surely is a fantastic purchase, especially with the agp/pci-e and ddr/ddr2 options(perfect for anyone still hanging on to a socket a system but eager to upgrade after seeing the conroe performance).