Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2

[dragonsm]

I really should have upgraded my ram back when the adata was going for a song and a dance, but I didn't....

Anyway, I was on newegg tonight and noticed that they have OCZ Platinum DDR2 800 after rebate for 19.99.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820227139

I did a search in this thread and I think I found someone that was running this ram on this board.....anybody know if in fact it would be a problem or not? The board probably wouldn't like the 2.1 volts, however it states 1.9-2.1.

Any advice would be great! I found a Q6600 local for about $130, and felt that if I were to upgrade from a P4 3.0 to that (my current ram is just a gig of DDR2 400) I'd need to also upgrade the ram...which I really need to do anyway.

I do like the prices on the E7200 and what the CPU can do, however I've never flashed a bios before....which has me a little nervous to do for the first time. I'm not to much of an overclocker, so the ability a chip has to overclock compared to the raw horsepower doesn't "excite" me as much.

Thanks in advance!
Steve

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: mrfoo
Well, I tried putting it in pcie primary mode, with the 2 pcie options on and off, no difference in behavior. System is same level of instability either overclocked or not. I see the crash in Guild Wars immediately upon changing resolution. Steam fails and locks system immediately.

Below link to site that has new bios supporting ATI 4xxx cards.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/news.php

Radeon HD 4850/4870 for 4CoreDUal-SATA2, 4CoreDual-VSTA and 775Dual-VSTA
Posted on 07/18/2008 @ 10:40 AM


Some members of our forum have experience stability issues with their systems running the VIA PT880 chipset mainboard with the newest Radeon HD4850 or HD 4870 PCIe 2.0 Graphics cards.

If you want to use ATI HD 4870/4850 series PCIE VGA card on
ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2
ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA/775Dual-VSTA

You would need these latest OCWORKBENCH beta bios available in our ASRock (Intel) forum.


OCWorkbench beta bios L2.02 for 4CoreDual-SATA2, L2.33 for 4CoreDual-VSTA, L3.13 for 775Dual-VSTA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If users want to use ATI HD 4870/4850 series PCIE VGA card on 4CoreDual-SATA2/4CoreDual-VSTA/775Dual-VSTA, please suggest users to flash attached beta BIOS first.

You may have to register with the site OCW (OCWORKBENCH)before you can obtain the bios from the below link.

http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=75467

BIOS L2.02 for 4CoreDual-SATA2
BIOS L2.33 for 4CoreDual-VSTA
BIOS L3.13 for 775Dual-VSTA



*The DOS update tool is included in the latest DOS version BIOS update file.
Please download it from ASRock website: http://www.asrock.com/support/Download.asp
Attached Files

 

[mrfoo]

Hory Crap!!!! This bios appears to have made it all better, back in source, full stable, max settings max res my monitor allows (1800x1440) using Beta catalyst 8.7.

 

[picurka]

HI

sorry that i just jump in here but i just got this board about a mounth ago and i couldnt miss seeing that u have q6600 and u running it 301fsb?U using setfsb?If i just pass 270 i cant shut down nor cant wake up from sleep..I tried numerous mem setting in bios and using stock timings.Also my hole 4gb dont show up anywhere else then int the bios setup....
I also tried voltages high and 266 with supported timings no felx optin or fex otin enabled and still i cant get the fsb up more than 270.The moded bios did open up the 10 mhz patch tho...

 

[dragonsm]

Alrighty.....well I got the "ram" issue figured out as a local place here in Minneapolis was selling single sticks of SuperTalent DDR2-800 for 9.99 for the first stick...and 29.99 for the matching stick. (Their stipulation was only one stick per day per person) Easy enough fix....my wife and I were out and about...and I stopped by with her and requested matching sticks...one for myself, one for my wife...and 21 dollars later, I was in business! It's been great ram so far and I have noticed a difference so far. BTW...for any "Twin Cities" folks, the place I got the ram was www.generalnanosystems.com and they have been dropping the price on this ram for a while. (I have read great reviews on it so far)

Anyway, I have done some searching and have found numerous posts on flashing a bios though I can't seem to find any one post to answer my question. Currently, I am sitting with the stock bios (1.5) and if I do decide to upgrade my video card (currently sporting an aging X1300pro agp) and possibly my cpu (P4 3.0) that I'll need to accomplish this task. My current setup does not have a floppy drive as I did away with my new case. Anyone care to walk a "newb" through how to flash a floppy either with a cd-rom or a USB (whichever is easier for someone to flash for a first time and I don't have a problem "wasting a cd" on a flash - BTW...do CD-RW's work?)

Thanks again in advance. Sorry about all the "novice questions", but I figure I'd better do it right the first time as I probably won't get a "second" chance at it if I screw it up.

Thanks again in advance. Slowly getting the hang of it!

Steve

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: dragonsm
Alrighty.....well I got the "ram" issue figured out as a local place here in Minneapolis was selling single sticks of SuperTalent DDR2-800 for 9.99 for the first stick...and 29.99 for the matching stick. (Their stipulation was only one stick per day per person) Easy enough fix....my wife and I were out and about...and I stopped by with her and requested matching sticks...one for myself, one for my wife...and 21 dollars later, I was in business! It's been great ram so far and I have noticed a difference so far. BTW...for any "Twin Cities" folks, the place I got the ram was www.generalnanosystems.com and they have been dropping the price on this ram for a while. (I have read great reviews on it so far)

Anyway, I have done some searching and have found numerous posts on flashing a bios though I can't seem to find any one post to answer my question. Currently, I am sitting with the stock bios (1.5) and if I do decide to upgrade my video card (currently sporting an aging X1300pro agp) and possibly my cpu (P4 3.0) that I'll need to accomplish this task. My current setup does not have a floppy drive as I did away with my new case. Anyone care to walk a "newb" through how to flash a floppy either with a cd-rom or a USB (whichever is easier for someone to flash for a first time and I don't have a problem "wasting a cd" on a flash - BTW...do CD-RW's work?)

Thanks again in advance. Sorry about all the "novice questions", but I figure I'd better do it right the first time as I probably won't get a "second" chance at it if I screw it up.

Thanks again in advance. Slowly getting the hang of it!

Steve

Below link to Asrock site for bios updates for this board.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/downl...ual-SATA2%20R2.0&s=775
Select desired Bios in OS column chose Windows not DOS version to download.
After download decompress files and double click on the AFUWIN file to install the bios.
Installing bios in Windows is that easy.
Only one warning make sure your PC is stable not randomly crashing unexpectedly, if PC crashes during a Bios update then you would require a new bios chip or hot flash your corrupted BIOS.
I have upgraded many times over the years in Windows and have never had a problem yet.
Bios updating is DOS is safer but requires more effort.
For DOS Bios installs look at page 80 of this thread or Google it if you need more info.

 

[cpmee]

requested matching sticks...one for myself, one for my wife...and 21 dollars later, I was in business! It's been great ram so far and I have noticed a difference so far.

Great price, cant beat that with a stick, heh.

I would test it with at least 4 passes of memtest86+ though.

 

[Alexraptor]

Hi i'm new here.
I hope you guys dont mind me asking about the 775Dual-VSTA, seeing as the 4CoreDual-SATA2 is its direct replacement.

Does anyone know what the best RAM setup for optimal performance would be in terms of both frequency and timings?
I currently have 2gb of some cheap Crucial 667Mhz PC2-5300 memory with timings of 5-5-5-15-T2, but im looking at perhaps buying some better memory. The question is, is there any ram that would be able to run at 667Mhz with 3-3-3-x-x timings on this board? And also what is the max voltage for the ram on it?

Is there also anything i can do with my current ram to improve performance?

 

[The Fedex Pope]

So after many months of waiting and watching on ebay, I scored an Intel C2D E4300 for $75 total. I've read that this is a particularly good CPU for OCing, kinda like the Celeron 300a was given the overclocks I'm seeing from others (3.0ghz+ from 1.80ghz stock). Also, its supposed to be easy to overclock on motherboards and ram that aren't hugely overclockable. First off, my system specs:

ASRock 4CoreDual-Sata 2.0
Pentium 4 2.8ghz Prescott (with stock Intel C2D HSF)
2x1gb AData DDR2800 (running in 667, max speed on my mobo)
BGFTech 7950GT PCI-e (running in x4 mode, max on mobo)
Audigy2 PCI soundcard
400w PSU
2 Maxtor IDE harddrives
1 NEC DVD+RW burner

Now I realize that the mobo isn't the best for overclocking, so I'm not expecting see some huge overclock. But if I could reach 2.5ghz or more using the stock HSF and keep it stable I'd be very happy.

However, I am an overclocking virgin. I've never attempted it ever. And the overclocking guides I've looked up on google refer to different kinds of motherboards with different bios settings etc. Basically, I would like to overclock the E4300 in the simplest way possible. No BSEL mods or anything like that. Realistically what kind of overclock could I expect on my hardware? Does anyone know of a really good overclocking guide for absolute n00bs? I wish there was like a step by step guide specifically for the 4CoreDual mobo and overclocking a C2D.

 

[dragonsm]

I went ahead and ran the test and everything checked out great! I've seen a few ram this "cheap" before with 40+ dollar rebates. It's nice to be able to buy ram for that price without having to deal with the rebates!!!

Things checked out great on the memtest86+ so that is an added bonus "feeling" to the already "bought ram cheap" feeling that I have.

Steve

 

[lowrider69]

I have a e6420 running on this board and was thinking of overclocking it a bit. I'm not a noob to overclocking in general but i'm a noob with this board. Is it safe to assume that I can safely hit 300mhz fsb with this board without raising voltages(voltage mods)? I have the pce-i bus set to 100mhz the ram is set to 266mhz(the memory mhz raises with the FSB when set to this, I already tried 276mhz FSB for fun...memory was also running @ 276mhz.. and she fired right up into Windows without issue) and I locked the pci/agp bus @33/66 mhz. Obviously I figured I would have to loosen the ram timings a bit the higher I go. Any other things I should be concerned about with the PT880 chipset when overclocking?

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: lowrider69
I have a e6420 running on this board and was thinking of overclocking it a bit. I'm not a noob to overclocking in general but i'm a noob with this board. Is it safe to assume that I can safely hit 300mhz fsb with this board without raising voltages(voltage mods)? I have the pce-i bus set to 100mhz the ram is set to 266mhz(the memory mhz raises with the FSB when set to this, I already tried 276mhz FSB for fun...memory was also running @ 276mhz.. and she fired right up into Windows without issue) and I locked the pci/agp bus @33/66 mhz. Obviously I figured I would have to loosen the ram timings a bit the higher I go. Any other things I should be concerned about with the PT880 chipset when overclocking?

I'm at 305FSB and can boot into windows at a higher FSB but loose stability.
Around 300FSB is about the max for most people with this board.
Set AGP voltage to highest setting while finding the highest FSB with your CPU as that feeds the north bridge chipset usually allowing you to get higher FSB.

 

[fritzfield]

Originally posted by: Mr Vain

Originally posted by: lowrider69
I have a e6420 running on this board and was thinking of overclocking it a bit. I'm not a noob to overclocking in general but i'm a noob with this board. Is it safe to assume that I can safely hit 300mhz fsb with this board without raising voltages(voltage mods)? I have the pce-i bus set to 100mhz the ram is set to 266mhz(the memory mhz raises with the FSB when set to this, I already tried 276mhz FSB for fun...memory was also running @ 276mhz.. and she fired right up into Windows without issue) and I locked the pci/agp bus @33/66 mhz. Obviously I figured I would have to loosen the ram timings a bit the higher I go. Any other things I should be concerned about with the PT880 chipset when overclocking?

I'm at 305FSB and can boot into windows at a higher FSB but loose stability.
Around 300FSB is about the max for most people with this board.
Set AGP voltage to highest setting while finding the highest FSB with your CPU as that feeds the north bridge chipset usually allowing you to get higher FSB.

Agreed. No matter what you do, 305 seems to be the max with the e6xxx chips. :disgust:

 

[cpmee]

Originally posted by: Alexraptor
Hi i'm new here.
I hope you guys dont mind me asking about the 775Dual-VSTA, seeing as the 4CoreDual-SATA2 is its direct replacement.

Does anyone know what the best RAM setup for optimal performance would be in terms of both frequency and timings?
I currently have 2gb of some cheap Crucial 667Mhz PC2-5300 memory with timings of 5-5-5-15-T2, but im looking at perhaps buying some better memory. The question is, is there any ram that would be able to run at 667Mhz with 3-3-3-x-x timings on this board? And also what is the max voltage for the ram on it?

Is there also anything i can do with my current ram to improve performance?

Generally running in a 1:1 ratio at 533mhz at 3-3-3-9 T1 will give the best performance. My cheap Adata pc6400 low voltage ram allows me to do this. The voltage setting on high on this board is only about 1.9volts, and I believe your Crucial needs that just for Cas 5. Look for cheap low voltage pc6400 ram or better with good reviews and run in a 1 : 1 ratio.

 

[Alexraptor]

Only 1.9? Funny, crucial has PC5300 BallistiX ram with 3-3-3-12 timings @ 667 MHz that needs 2.2v, and is listed as compatible with the 775Dual-VSTA

 

[lowrider69]

Originally posted by: Mr Vain

Originally posted by: lowrider69
I have a e6420 running on this board and was thinking of overclocking it a bit. I'm not a noob to overclocking in general but i'm a noob with this board. Is it safe to assume that I can safely hit 300mhz fsb with this board without raising voltages(voltage mods)? I have the pce-i bus set to 100mhz the ram is set to 266mhz(the memory mhz raises with the FSB when set to this, I already tried 276mhz FSB for fun...memory was also running @ 276mhz.. and she fired right up into Windows without issue) and I locked the pci/agp bus @33/66 mhz. Obviously I figured I would have to loosen the ram timings a bit the higher I go. Any other things I should be concerned about with the PT880 chipset when overclocking?

I'm at 305FSB and can boot into windows at a higher FSB but loose stability.
Around 300FSB is about the max for most people with this board.
Set AGP voltage to highest setting while finding the highest FSB with your CPU as that feeds the north bridge chipset usually allowing you to get higher FSB.

O.K. thanks. I might try it later this week although a 267 mhz overclock might not be worth the hassle. Just wanted to tinker a bit. If the board was 1333 mhz FSB I would go all out.

 

[lowrider69]

What speed is v-link running at when set to normal. How about fast?

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: lowrider69
What speed is v-link running at when set to normal. How about fast?

Ultra V-Link Bus
Delivering data throughput speeds of up to 1066 MB/s from the VIA VT8237R Plus South Bridge to the VIA PT880 Ultra North Bridge, the Ultra V-Link interface delivers the necessary bandwidth and low latency required by today's increasingly demanding multimedia applications.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/produ.../pt880_ultra/index.jsp

Below is a very good read about this motherboard.

http://www.madshrimps.be/?acti...tpage=3174&articID=670



:thumbsup:

 

[lowrider69]

Thanks for the link, there's some great information there. I noticed they enabled Pipeline DRQCTL option, not sure technically what that is, they said it raises memory bandwidth. It's set to auto by default, I enabled it for the hell of it.

 

[JonW]

Originally posted by: picurka
HI

sorry that i just jump in here but i just got this board about a mounth ago and i couldnt miss seeing that u have q6600 and u running it 301fsb?U using setfsb?If i just pass 270 i cant shut down nor cant wake up from sleep..I tried numerous mem setting in bios and using stock timings.Also my hole 4gb dont show up anywhere else then int the bios setup....
I also tried voltages high and 266 with supported timings no felx optin or fex otin enabled and still i cant get the fsb up more than 270.The moded bios did open up the 10 mhz patch tho...

You need to do the vagp mod. This is the mod that will make you gain a concrete fsb out of your asrock mb and the cpu bsel mod (it only applies to those with c2d 200fsb). I stop tweaking my system for awhile and been doing some CoH OF marathon and WiC.

E.G. This is with my quad, you can reach higher with dual core 5-10fsb more bootable.
1.60v - 270fsb (bios high setting)
1.70v - 280fsb (max bootable to windows)
1.80v - 290fsb (" ")
1.90v - 300fsb (" ")
2.00v - 310fsb (This is where things start to get screwy. It's bootable to windows but there are quirks that are pack nicely to it. e.g. pc won't shutdown properly/audio problems etc)
2.10v - 2.15v (It all goes down to ram tweaking and if you have the via pro/ultra chipset on your mb) Or (You want to do a max screenie or break your own superpi/pifast record)
2.20v - 3.30v (OVP kicks in)

I still don't have my ddr2 ram I'll see if I can get the same oc compared to my ddr ram. Also your 4gb of ram could be limiting your oc as it presses the nb (mem controller) hard. I only use setfsb to check if the pci-e/pci lock is working. You can verify Sync with Cpu option via bios that it is not indeed working. It is always stuck at 99.9mhz even if you boot the system to 300fsb-310fsb.

Regards,
Jon

 

[The Fedex Pope]

Well I installed an E4300, after cleaning the system throughly of dust etc. At default speed, everything runs normal. Virtually no difference in terms of performance in games like DoD:S. However, my Hackintosh did bootup almost twice as fast and ran even better than it did before. Note I'm using the stock HSF, but I used AS5 this time.

So, I tried overclocking. Went inside BIOS, changed the CPU Frequency from 200 to 210, locked AGP/PCI to 33/66, locked PCI-e to 100mhz. At 1.90ghz, I got an 8fps increase from 48 to 56fps in DoD:S. Tried bumping it up to 220, rebooted. XP automatically reboots. Rebooted again, launched Steam, I got an 0x8E stop error BSOD. Rebooted again, tried launching steam again and still same result.

So the results of my overclock? Crash and burn at 220. A 200mhz increase gives me BSODs. Idle, temps are 44c which seems high to me. Virtually no difference than my old P4. Under load, they dont increase much though, dont think I've even seen it hit 50c.

Either way, I'm disappointed. I wasnt expecting 3.0ghz out of the box, but if I cant even get past 220 I'm not so sure it was worth the upgrade. Temps dont seem that much cooler, so the only plus side other than having dual cores (which is only useful with the handful of apps that can use 2 cores), is using less power, and I see no difference over my P4 in gaming performance. Either I did something wrong, or am doing something wrong in setting the BIOS, or the 4coreDual is awful for OCing. I dont see how seeing everyone else having success.

If thats the case, I'm screwed. I'm not replacing the motherboard or getting a new PSU or HSF etc. I could have just gotten a brand new E7200 and spared my self the trouble of OC'ing.

 

[JonW]

Originally posted by: The Fedex Pope
Well I installed an E4300, after cleaning the system throughly of dust etc. At default speed, everything runs normal. Virtually no difference in terms of performance in games like DoD:S. However, my Hackintosh did bootup almost twice as fast and ran even better than it did before. Note I'm using the stock HSF, but I used AS5 this time.

So, I tried overclocking. Went inside BIOS, changed the CPU Frequency from 200 to 210, locked AGP/PCI to 33/66, locked PCI-e to 100mhz. At 1.90ghz, I got an 8fps increase from 48 to 56fps in DoD:S. Tried bumping it up to 220, rebooted. XP automatically reboots. Rebooted again, launched Steam, I got an 0x8E stop error BSOD. Rebooted again, tried launching steam again and still same result.

So the results of my overclock? Crash and burn at 220. A 200mhz increase gives me BSODs. Idle, temps are 44c which seems high to me. Virtually no difference than my old P4. Under load, they dont increase much though, dont think I've even seen it hit 50c.

Either way, I'm disappointed. I wasnt expecting 3.0ghz out of the box, but if I cant even get past 220 I'm not so sure it was worth the upgrade. Temps dont seem that much cooler, so the only plus side other than having dual cores (which is only useful with the handful of apps that can use 2 cores), is using less power, and I see no difference over my P4 in gaming performance. Either I did something wrong, or am doing something wrong in setting the BIOS, or the 4coreDual is awful for OCing. I dont see how seeing everyone else having success.

If thats the case, I'm screwed. I'm not replacing the motherboard or getting a new PSU or HSF etc. I could have just gotten a brand new E7200 and spared my self the trouble of OC'ing.

Are you using ddr or ddr2? That bsod looks like ram/chipset related. Not enough vdimm or your ram timings are too tight. If you are using ddr2 and you're using a strap that the chipset might not like, you will get unstable with even very little oc. Your cpu should be good with a stock vcore and 400mhz more clock speed. To get 3ghz out of your chip, you need to mod your mb bsel pin/vagp.


Goodluck,
Jon

 

[vixensjlin]

For this motherboard, is there any software can change StepSpeed status in Windows XP (32bit) like the modified BIOS does?

 

[The Fedex Pope]

Its AData DDR2800 ram. By default its set to 667, and I leave everything else in Auto. When I try 220mhz with 667, I get reboots/bsods. When I bump it down to 533, it seems to be stable.

I just want to get to 2.3 or 2.4 as easily as possible. I cant even get close to 2.1 though, and I have no idea. I really dont want to do any volt/BSEL mods, I'm a total ocing newbie.
Heres some CPUID info if it helps:

http://img389.imageshack.us/my...?image=64516612vy0.jpg]

[/url]

 

[JonW]

Originally posted by: The Fedex Pope
Its AData DDR2800 ram. By default its set to 667, and I leave everything else in Auto. When I try 220mhz with 667, I get reboots/bsods. When I bump it down to 533, it seems to be stable.

I just want to get to 2.3 or 2.4 as easily as possible. I cant even get close to 2.1 though, and I have no idea. I really dont want to do any volt/BSEL mods, I'm a total ocing newbie.
Heres some CPUID info if it helps:

http://img389.imageshack.us/my...?image=64516612vy0.jpg]

[/url]

Damn, that's only 190Mhz+ oc on the cpu. Your cpu should do better than that on stock vcore. Try 533 strap on the ram and push it all the way to 230-240fsb. Max your vdimm to highest and play with trfc. You set trfc to high for more stability. Open everest ultimate edition and check what is the default trfc so you have something to start with, it's under chipset tab. Set the ram timings manually to 4-4-4-12 (try running your ram to 3-3-3-9 later once you get the feel on how your mb clocks with that particular ram). Also play with tras. Higher means more stability. You can tighten these timings one by one later on.


@vixensjlin
You can enable speedstep with crystalcpuid or rmclock


Goodluck
Jon