ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA

[lookin4dlz]

I'm at 2.95GHz w/ memory @ 2-3-3-7 & bios 1.5 (that's what came on the board), running an amazing 29C (just web surfing) on the stock cooler

The board/chip doesn't want to go higher that 297fsb with the current bios/voltage, & I don't know if it's worth trying to go any higher.

 

[funboy6942]

Originally posted by: lookin4dlz
I'm at 2.95GHz w/ memory @ 2-3-3-7 & bios 1.5 (that's what came on the board), running an amazing 29C (just web surfing) on the stock cooler

The board/chip doesn't want to go higher that 297fsb with the current bios/voltage, & I don't know if it's worth trying to go any higher.

The diff in me running mine at 310 vs 300 fsb is 1000 points in 3dmark 2001, havent tried any of the others to see how much they have dropped, but this should give you an idea as to what your missing by not pushing it further, which really is not all that much.

Just be happy with what you have right now, and later when your ready to upgrade, all you really have to do is buy another board, cheap second hand for under $50, that is a great overclocker at its time, to unlock the hidden power you couldnt get with this board.

Thats atleast my plan. Right now I have smoked my 4000+ rig, and with what it cost me to do it I couldnt of done it if I had just kept my 4000+ set up and changed ram, or bought a faster GFX card. For what this has given me, and for the price, its like I had just slapped on a 8800GTX on my 4000+ board but without paying $500

In a year when I need something faster, I just have to buy another board, that was a great overclocker now used off someone who paid $200 for it, and I can get it off them for $50. Then I can unlock this cpu even further, buy a 8800GTS or GTX for about $150-$200 at that time as well, and this sob will be smoking fast yet again on the cheap

I do my pc like I been doing with cars, never a brand new one if I can help it, unless it is dirt cheap and goes really fast, then buy everyones 2nd hand they think is junk, for cheap, making mine fast as hell. Sure it may not be "todays" technology, but do I really need my NFS MW or FEAR running at 500 FPS VS 150 FPS? Nope, is there anything out right now I play that needs a X6800 cpu, with 8 gigs of ram, and 2 8800GTX's running in SLI, that doesnt suck, as far as game play goes, and massive eye candy would make me want to still play it vs not much eye candy? NO. So I have been very happy all these years, myself, with how I been doing my pc's, and saving a bundle

Now if you excuse me, the talk of fear, and nfs mw, has made me want to go play them again, they may be old games, but the best for the PC, IMO, that I like. That new NFS Carbon game blows, I hate night driving, I cant even see in the real world at night, and they kill it for me with the damn night driving games, hence why I love MW

 

[jamesnuutinen]

little off topic but what about this mobo?

ASUS P5VDC-MX/C P4M800PRO,1066FSB,DDR2,AGP8x,VGA,RAID.mATX

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: jamesnuutinen
little off topic but what about this mobo?

ASUS P5VDC-MX/C P4M800PRO,1066FSB,DDR2,AGP8x,VGA,RAID.mATX

Positives for the ASUS P5VDC-MX/C

4 SATA II Ports
1 PCI-e X1 slot
Integrated graphics

Negatives for the ASUS P5VDC-MX/C compared with the Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard.

Only 2 PCI slots
No 4core CPU support
Single Channel Memory only
No full PCI-e 16 slot
MAX DDR2 533Mhz no 667Mhz
No HD sound
No HDMI sound riser
No Vista support according to tcsenter
Bios overclocking options are probably worse than Asrocks from the user reviews posted here.

58% excellent rating for the Asrock 4Core Dual-VSTA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813157107


Only 47% scored ASUS P5VDC-MX as an excellent board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131587

 

[kevins7189]

having a heck of a time figuring out overclocking on this board.
I have a 6320 CPU, DDR2 mem (OCZ Sli), and a 1950ProAGP. I turn off flexibility, changed cpu to async, memory at 533 (1:1), and can get the FSB to about 300 (rated fsb 1200), but my MHz only comes out around 2.1GHz. Is that correct? The 4300's seem to crank a lot higher, can a 6320 get higher? I've not messed with the voltages, should I? Maybe there is something else I should be turning off?

Also one other thing. I can't seem to get AGP fast writes to behave on this board, should I be able to turn on this feature? It seems like things run slower with it on (with latest catalyst drivers).

thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: kevins7189
having a heck of a time figuring out overclocking on this board.
I have a 6320 CPU, DDR2 mem (OCZ Sli), and a 1950ProAGP. I turn off flexibility, changed cpu to async, memory at 533 (1:1), and can get the FSB to about 300 (rated fsb 1200), but my MHz only comes out around 2.1GHz. Is that correct? The 4300's seem to crank a lot higher, can a 6320 get higher? I've not messed with the voltages, should I? Maybe there is something else I should be turning off?

Also one other thing. I can't seem to get AGP fast writes to behave on this board, should I be able to turn on this feature? It seems like things run slower with it on (with latest catalyst drivers).

thanks in advance for any advice.

the X6xx0 series C2D's run a lower multiplier than the E4xx0 series C2D's, you won't be able to overclock your e6320 as high as a e4300 because of this, the Asrock board seems to be limited to around 300-320ish with out any volt modding, but it doesn't go much higher even when volt modding.

Your CPU isn't the limitation in the overclock (although the low multiplier isn't helping) it the Front side bus that is the limitation.

 

[funboy6942]

Originally posted by: kevins7189
having a heck of a time figuring out overclocking on this board.
I have a 6320 CPU, DDR2 mem (OCZ Sli), and a 1950ProAGP. I turn off flexibility, changed cpu to async, memory at 533 (1:1), and can get the FSB to about 300 (rated fsb 1200), but my MHz only comes out around 2.1GHz. Is that correct? The 4300's seem to crank a lot higher, can a 6320 get higher? I've not messed with the voltages, should I? Maybe there is something else I should be turning off?

Also one other thing. I can't seem to get AGP fast writes to behave on this board, should I be able to turn on this feature? It seems like things run slower with it on (with latest catalyst drivers).

thanks in advance for any advice.

Not sure if this will help you, but I am having some kind of issues myself with the 7.4 drivers too.

 

[jeffspam]

Weird video corruption issue here, don't know where to place the blame. I have an nVidia 7300LE PCIe card in the system, which has been working just fine, until I put in a Twinhan 1025 DVB-S PCI card. Now, anytime I playback video using overlay mode (in any app -- e.g.: VLC), I get video corruption within the overlay window (looks similar to tracking problems on an old VHS VCR), but if it plays for more than a few seconds, the system hangs/reboots/etc. If I turn off overlay, everything is great.

I've brought everything back to stock freqs (I'm running the E4300), removed all other cards (including a Fusion HDTV card, which should be *similar* in architecture to the Twinhan card), moved the Twinhan card to a new slot, rolled back the nVidia drivers, updated the system BIOS (1.70)... pretty much everything I can think of. Has anyone experienced a similar issue with this board? Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[ronach]

Windows usually does a good job in sorting out IRQ's on PCI cards for use with your system..BUT..the more you have in there the better chance of a conflict. I would look for a IRQ conflict first, then look elsewhere.

 

[preelude]

i thought the wall on this board was 285-290 fsb, how did you guys achieve 315-320 without vmodding?

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: ronach
Windows usually does a good job in sorting out IRQ's on PCI cards for use with your system..BUT..the more you have in there the better chance of a conflict. I would look for a IRQ conflict first, then look elsewhere.

If the system is using APIC mode, Windows does no 'sorting' of IRQs for PCI cards at all. Its done entirely at the hardware level (and BIOS).

Originally posted by: Mr Vain
[Only 47% scored ASUS P5VDC-MX as an excellent board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131587

In addition, the P5VDC-MX doesn't support Vista due to some PCI configuration issue which ASUS claims is a chipset/hardware problem (more like a BIOS problem that ASUS doesn't want to bother fixing).

 

[Mr Vain]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: ronach
Windows usually does a good job in sorting out IRQ's on PCI cards for use with your system..BUT..the more you have in there the better chance of a conflict. I would look for a IRQ conflict first, then look elsewhere.

If the system is using APIC mode, Windows does no 'sorting' of IRQs for PCI cards at all. Its done entirely at the hardware level (and BIOS).

Originally posted by: Mr Vain
[Only 47% scored ASUS P5VDC-MX as an excellent board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131587

In addition, the P5VDC-MX doesn't support Vista due to some PCI configuration issue which ASUS claims is a chipset/hardware problem (more like a BIOS problem that ASUS doesn't want to bother fixing).

Thanks for letting us know that I'll add that to my list.

 

[focussoft]

Originally posted by: linuxtiger

Originally posted by: focussoft
I ordered this board with a e4400 and 2 gigs of the same corsair ram U ordered hoping to be able to oc to close to 3ghz

Hello focussoft, please keep us updated on the E4400 Overclock Result soon

Well just to report
The mobo with the e4400 and the corsair ram mentioned before runs like crazy
I did a dry run on foam to see if it would boot up , then i installed everything in the new case yesterday
as of now i have it running stable at 2.9Ghz without any mods
all i can figure out so far is that the memory is running at 1:1 with the cpu fsb
Most likely that is the bottleneck why i can't get it much higher
at 300 fsb it boots up but doesn't get passed the startup screen
I have it running at 290 fbs , which means that mem is also running at 290 fsb , not really sure what that means for ddr675 ram
I did a short look at the bios but didn't get very far in figuring out what it all means
had a terrible day yesterday , anxitie attacks burned me out , so i had a hard time figuring out basic things
Had no crashes so far and just did a basic install of winxp sp2 yesterday , only had the chance to test out a few games so far and they run awesome fast and no ctd or anything so far
I have to re-read this thread to figure out how to change mem timings and cut it loose from the cpu fsb , i might be able to break the 300fps barrier,though i think the mem will perform better at 1:1 and lowering that might lower my system performance overall even though the cpu would run higher ??
besides i think this bios is a 1.50 version , just saw a glimps of a bios message while booting up
So far my report

 

[ronach]

tscenter,
Thanks for setting me straight on the APIC mode thang, man..how did the boys blow that one by me..ah hah..that's when my last X was in the picture. lots of good stuff went by the wayside in them days. Anyhoo..you guys keep this old gent straight now..I'm in need that's for sure.

 

[kevins7189]

was wondering if sound popping is something that should be occurring?. I haven't had this problem since the last time I owned a via chipset board. Just started playing supreme command on my new 6320 with 1950pro agp, 4core-vsta, and am noticing sound popping frequently. Video runs smooth and don't really see any lagging, just annoying sound issues. I have a 2800+ with an nvidia chipset that isn't having the problems. Back when this was a problem on my old via chipset we had to have some pci latency patch, that really never worked all that great. any ideas?

 

[tigersty1e]

Can this board handle 2 x 1 GB ram kits?

 

[focussoft]

Originally posted by: tigersty1e
Can this board handle 2 x 1 GB ram kits?

I have 2x 1Gb of corsair 675 running without any problems

 

[djcoolio]

I am planning to buy 8800gts 320MB for my 4core dual vsta.

Have anyone try this card with this motherboard?

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: djcoolio
I am planning to buy 8800gts 320MB for my 4core dual vsta.

Have anyone try this card with this motherboard?

Yes, I just spent a couple of days with a Gigabyte GTX and GTS 640 (I "borrowed" them from work), both worked fine for me under Vista and XP (using the latest WHQL drivers, anything earlier would cause a BSOD).

Strange thing is that I got them both working under XP on my rig but on other similar setup that I have been working on I've had mixed results depending on the brand of the 8800 (I know it shouldn't matter, an 8800 is an 8800).

But for me the Gigabyte models worked fine, although Vista's drivers are a sloppy steamy pile of poo compared to ATI's vista drivers.

 

[tigersty1e]

What is this VGA list?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/vga.asp?Model=4CoreDual-VSTA&s=


Is this suported PCIE x 16 video cards or PCIE x4 supported cards? I'm asking because I also heard that the 8800 works with this board, but the 8800 is not on this list.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: tigersty1e
What is this VGA list?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/vga.asp?Model=4CoreDual-VSTA&s=


Is this suported PCIE x 16 video cards or PCIE x4 supported cards? I'm asking because I also heard that the 8800 works with this board, but the 8800 is not on this list.

it is just a list that Asrock has tested with the board...all of them are x16 cards (as 99.99% of all PCI-E video cards are)

 

[djcoolio]

?hanx a lot guys!

I will order 8800gts 320MB to go to another level of gaming from my poor x800.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: djcoolio
?hanx a lot guys!

I will order 8800gts 320MB to go to another level of gaming from my poor x800.

I would see if you can try one out first, as I said in my earlier post some work and some don't, the x4 slot in the 4coreDual is a strange critter.

 

[djcoolio]

Thanx for the tip! Yes i will try one first.

But i think with Vista i will have no problems. I read some other forums also, they say the problem is basically with Windows Xp.

I send an email and look what i got.

Dear Sir,
Thank you for contacting ASRock
Due to the restriction of the NVIDIA VGA driver, 4CoreDual-VSTA could not support NVIDIA 8800 series PCIE card under Windows XP/2000 system.
If you want to install NVIDIA 8800 series PCIE card, we suggest you to install Windows Vista for try.
Besides, we recommend you to refer to the Supported PCIE card list to install compliant PCIE card.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/vga.asp?Model=4CoreDual-VSTA&s=775

Thanks for the mail.


Best Wishes
ASRock

 

[kekewons]

About to pull the trigger on a new build using this motherboard, but I'd like to get some opinions first about CPU choice.

I'm aware the board generally has a FSB limit of about 300 (assuming no volt mod), and it seems most peeps can get pretty close to this...

...so if can too, and if the primary use of the new machine will be for Windows gaming/simming, would I expect to see better performance from a E4400 (10x multiplier/2MB cache) running @ about 3GHz, or from a E6600 (8x multiplier/4MB cache) running @ about 2.6GHz? Or would it really not matter much at all for gaming (primarily CPU intensive apps)?

I will certainly put 2GB memory in the machine, btw. Probably DDR2.

---------

I'm using another machine (not mine), as a reference:

Conroe 6600@2.6ghz
ASRock 775Dual-Vsta
2Gig DDR400
Gainward 7800GS+ 512Mb@599/1380Mhz(Agp 7900Gt)
200Gb Seagate
Seasonic S12 600w

I'll be running a very similar 7800GS AGP video card in my PC. Moreover, we two both run many of the same apps (and this fellow seems quite happy with his).

He reports these benchmarks scores:

3DMark '05/ 9819p; '06/ 5519p; Aquamark3/ 122 158p.

Thanks for any replies.


k