Asrock 939Dual pci-e/agp board

[bob4432]

i have read that there are problems running this board at 1t even with 2sticks of ram, has this issue been fixed with a bios update?

thanks

 

[Ike0069]

Don't think so. If they have, it's very recent. Huge thread in the MB forum about this board. Apparently only a few people can actually run 1T for whatever reason.

 

[dunkster]

Some are running 1T stable, but many of these boards won't stabilize at 1T. Among those that will run stable at 1T, there is no apparent 'magic' component combination. They just were fortunate.

Mine won't stabilize with 1T command rate at any memory clock speed above 133MHz.

In all other regards it's really a decent board.

Hope this helps!

 

[bob4432]

are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

 

[Zepper]

There are hacked BIOSes over on OCWorkbench.com for Asrock dual.

.bh.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

MSI Neo2-F, if you can find one. Uses the same BIOS as the Neo2 Platinum (same exact board minus Firewire support and onboard gigabit), and the Platinum will run Opterons with easybios.1c3. MSI doesn't officially acknowledge Opteron support, but many are doing it with zero problems.
Excellent OC'ing board, and this latest BIOS seems to be pretty stable.

 

[Somniferum]

Originally posted by: Zepper
There are hacked BIOSes over on OCWorkbench.com for Asrock dual.

Those hacked BIOSes let you increase VCORE and VDIMM, but to my knowledge none of them fix the 1T issue. The official ASRock BIOS is at 1.5, which does not fix it either.

Personally I cannot run 1T + Dual Channel on this board. It fails Memtest86 on Test #8 every time, and also causes random reboots. Other than that, it's a great board.

I e-mailed ASRock support a couple days ago asking about the 1T issue, and I specifically asked if they were planning to fix it in a future BIOS revision. Have not heard anything back yet.

 

[Zepper]

I didn't say the hacked BIOSes could fix the 1T problem, but personally I don't think it is that big a deal. It's an amazing mobo for the money. I wish the other mfrs that are supposed to be developing similar ULi based mobos would hurry it up. Competition is almost always a good thing.

.bh.

 

[PingSpike]

It is unfortunate that 1t isn't stable on this board, however thats my only real gripe with it. Otherwise I felt it was an excellent buy. 1t is somewhat overrated anyway. It results in something like 3-5% in various benchmarks.

 

[bob4432]

sounds like i should not worry about 1t but instead the fact that i would go from a p4 @ 3.0GHz to a opteron 144/146 @ 2.4GHz? i am assuming i would get more out of the newer cpu than the hinderance the timing has. is this type of an o/c common with this board? i would also be plannning to swap my psu to either a forton green series (efficient), newer antec or pc&p of around 400-500W. also don't have a problem going with a xp90 either.

 

[formulav8]

From day 1 I've been able to do 1T with no problems. I am running 2x512MB of Patriot Winbond-BH5 memory. And 1T is a fairly important setting for A64's. Although most of the time the performance hit is 5% or whatever, there are a couple area's where the impact is up to 16%. There is a anandtech article on it somewhere. I would probably not keep a board if it would not allow me to run 1T stable. Anyways, I am wondering if it is the memory chips in general that will allow the board to run 1T stable or not.



Jason

 

[Finns14]

wats 1T???

 

[sandorski]

I have this board and it's been fine for me(though it won't run 1t or even 400 mhz on my generic ram). However, I only recommend it for those who can't upgrade their Video now, but want to later. If you don't need the AGP--->PCI-e upgrade path, buy a different proven motherboard.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

IIRC, the MSI NEO 2 is usually recommended for that kind of mobo. Might want to Search for it to confirm whether it's the board I've heard mentioned.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

Did you not see my earlier post, or are you just ignoring me.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

Did you not see my earlier post, or are you just ignoring me.

sorry, i did see it. i had a procedure done yesterday which require quite a bit of medications, so i am a little foggy still. no disrespect meant.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

Did you not see my earlier post, or are you just ignoring me.

sorry, i did see it. i had a procedure done yesterday which require quite a bit of medications, so i am a little foggy still. no disrespect meant.

LOL. I was only kidding.

Neo2 is probably your best bet, but the Neo-F seems to be discontinued or something because all the big boys no longer carry it. It does show up at ecost though, but never ordered from them personally.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: bob4432
are there any other good m/bs that are decent o/cers, run the 939opterons, have agp and are more value priced?

anybody have any suggestion to this question?

Did you not see my earlier post, or are you just ignoring me.

sorry, i did see it. i had a procedure done yesterday which require quite a bit of medications, so i am a little foggy still. no disrespect meant.

LOL. I was only kidding.

Neo2 is probably your best bet, but the Neo-F seems to be discontinued or something because all the big boys no longer carry it. It does show up at ecost though, but never ordered from them personally.

thanks

 

[Ike0069]

After a little research, the K8N Neo2-F has been indeed been discontinued and doesn't seem to be availabe anywhere. The Neo2 Platinum is still available, but not exactly moderately priced.

There are several used platinums for sell in FS/FT though.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Ike0069
After a little research, the K8N Neo2-F has been indeed been discontinued and doesn't seem to be availabe anywhere. The Neo2 Platinum is still available, but not exactly moderately priced.

There are several used platinums for sell in FS/FT though.

thanks

 

[Greenman]

You can get the MSI K8N NEO2 F here.
pcsuperdeals.com

Had to edit the link, all screwed up. Pcsuperdeals is the place though.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Greenman
You can get the MSI K8N NEO2 F here.
http://www.pcsuperdeals.com/Productview.asp?SessionID={5D699920-6B53-4D87-9677-011F60E874A5}&ProductID=aeb917cd-8506-4ffe-8502-1d524b63a09b

thanks, was hoping to get one a little cheaper, as i will be selling my p4 rig for this, so i would like to keep the output of $$$ on my end as low as possible ( i am cheap...)

i will keep looking...

 

[Somniferum]

If value is what you want, what's wrong with the ASRock? $66 is hard to beat for everything this board has to offer. So you might not be able to run at 1T til they fix the BIOS -- big deal. It's a steal in every other way.

 

[Spatulator]

When I bought this motherboard I read about the problems people had running at 1t and some people had no problem at all. Its funny that people seem to think if you can run your memory at 1t that you must be a lucky one who got a "good" board. The issue is almost definitely caused by another factor in your setup if you cant get the ram to run at 1t.
In the ocworkbench forums they seem to think its an issue with the memory controller on the new venice cpus. This makes alot of sense to me because I have no problems running 1t with an older winchester 3500 cpu. The problem is likely complicated by the fact that most people are overclocking the crap out of their venice cpus, the dimms are very close to each other when running in dual channel mode, increasing the need for air ventilation in that area of your case where all your psu wires are dangling around.