ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - Socket 939 with PCI-E and real AGP and Socket AM2 upgrade path

[WT]

Seems that the concensus on the OCWorkbench forums is that this will work fine, so I ordered the 5000+ B.E. today, along with a HSF from the Egg. When I went to buy the combo deal on Newegg with this chip and the Mushkin RAM it was OOS (first, the Corsair - it too is OOS), so I gave up on buying from the Egg and found it on TD for $30 less plus the CPU came with Call of Juarez for free. Newegg did have a deal on a Cooler Master tower HSF (a blatant Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro 7 ripoff) for $22-20 MIR, so I should be able to accomplish this upgrade for under $150 (keeping in mind the AM2CPU card is coming as a gift on Xmas).

AMD 5000+ Black Edition = 99
Cooler Master Hyper TX2 = 2 AR
Super Talent DDR2/800 2gb = 44
Asrock Am2CPU upgrd card = free

When I bought this board back in '06, I didn't realize how far I could drag it along, but it continues to run everything I throw at it. It has been my bench rig for over 2+ years as well, and has served as my Vista RC1 beta testbed, as well as more recently my Windows Home Server beta PC. As much as I upgrade, it still had a place aside of my workbench, and after this latest upgrade, it actually will be a very nice spare gamer rig if I ever have friends over for some LAN action. After going Intel for the first time since '97 earlier this year, its nice to know that we still have AMD around offering up competition. Without AMD, that quad core 6600 you have wouldn't be as cheap in price as the e6600 I bought in June, so keep that in mind before you write off AMD for good. I'll make sure and post my upgrade experience in late December somewheres around here.

 

[imported_DarkPenguin]

Where did you get the AM2CPU card?

 

[WT]

Ewiz has them in stock for $31. If you are shopping for one, make sure and take a look at the Super Talent RAM, as it continues to drop in price. I picked up a 2GB DDR2-800 stick for $40 + S/H today, down from $43 yesterday.

Ewiz AM2CPU card

 

[imported_learnmedia]

Need some help. Newegg delivered my 6000+ and 2 gig of G.Skill ram yesterday. I installed the AM2 CPU board into my 939DS2 taking care to follow instructions to a tee. Moved jumpers. Connected 12v connector to CPU board and not motherboard. Booted up like a champ. Posted just fine. Much faster boot time than my x2 4800+. Arrived at desktop in XPSP2 and after about 2 minutes... dead. Like power had been shutoff.

I have an Antec Neo 550w PSU. Was working fine with 939DS2/4800+ config. Bought the PSU recently to ensure ample power along the 12v rails to a new BFG 8800GT OC.

Seemed like a PSU issue but now I'm not certain. Without the AM2 CPU board inserted, PSU revs up, case fan spins, fan on graphics card spins, etc. Plug in the AM2 CPU board and nada. Zilch. I think it's just a bad one but how do I check for sure? Is there another/better way to troubleshoot just the daughtercard? Is it shorting out everything else when it's inserted in the future card slot? If so is there a solution?

Also, would the power draw differ that much between my old trusty 939DS2/4800+ and this new 6000+ run on the AM2 CPU board so as to cause PSU failure? Didn't care about the wattage (125W?) at the time. Now I'm thinking the 5000 Black Edition just might have been a better match for my system upgrade. Yes? No?

Thanks in advance.

 

[WT]

I'd agree that the B.E. would be a better match, but since you already have the chip, have you tried reseating the riser card ? Make sure you didn't have a jumper come loose as well, as there are plenty when you switch from 939 to AM2. I wish I could answer how to test a riser card, but unless you find another to swap, that rules that out. I may buy a second card, at which point I can send it to you to test it. I plan on voltmodding mine so a second one would allow me to do this without suffering any downtime.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: WT
Ewiz has them in stock for $31. If you are shopping for one, make sure and take a look at the Super Talent RAM, as it continues to drop in price. I picked up a 2GB DDR2-800 stick for $40 + S/H today, down from $43 yesterday.

Ewiz AM2CPU card

Sweet! Do you happen to know if Phenom support is planned for these mobos, and would a Phenom drop into that socket?

 

[WT]

Larry, I will say that Phenom support at this point looks to be a negatory. You and I both wanted to hear otherwise, but the contacts with Asrock tech support so far offer up the lame excuse of 'The CPU microcode for the Phenom will not fit in the smaller BIOS code of the Asrock SATA BIOS. Could somebody mod a 4mb BIOS and add it to the Asrock to replace the 2mb stock one ?? hmmm .... crazy ideas ...

Here's the discussion link, with Asrock's reply:

"Dear Sir,
Thank you for contacting ASRock
Sorry! 939SLI32-eSATA2, 939SLI-eSATA2 and 939Dual-SATA2 does not support new AMD Phenom AM2+ CPU.
Besides, we did not have this kind of 4Mb BIOS for these models.

Sorry for your inconvenience


Best Wishes
ASRock"

A newer board from Asrock, with some interesting points to make mention of, but not a performance board (as usual from Asrock) by our lofty expectations is shown below:

Phenom NF3 based Asrock mainboard

 

[VirtualLarry]

Damn, that's really too bad. It would be the icing on the cake if this board supported the phenoms too. I'm surprised to hear about the 2Mbit BIOS, I thought all boards were using a 4MBit or larger BIOS these days. Damn cost-cutting!

I wonder if they could produce a new Phenom-only BIOS, that would fit in 2Mbit? I doubt that they would spend the engineering resources on such a thing though. It might be nice if they released a new, updated Dual-Sata2/Vista board, with a 4Mbit BIOS chip and Phenom support. (Perhaps a native AM2+ socket, and DDR2 slots directly on the board.)

This was in that thread. Perhaps there's some hope still?

As I understand there's hope for the owners of 939Dual-Vsta because of the bigger BIOS size (4Mb vs 2Mb in 939Dual-Sata2).

 

[crockman]

Hi,

Some Questions for all you Asrock Dual SataII MB owners if possible.

First, this is an On-going Thread i started here a few days ago trying to figure out whats wrong with my Asrock PC.

Asrock PC Thread

I'd very much like to apologize in advance for my very bad Habit of "Too much writing", The Thread unfortunately is long-winded.

The Questions that I'd like to ask are Component Compatibility & BIOS/Hardware Settings.

PC Hardware ( Note: These were all bought earlier this year for the simple purpose of Inexpensive PC Parts for Performance in Online Gaming) ( I Play WoW, Lord of the Rings (Lotro) & Star Wars Galaxies (SWG))

Asrock 939Dual Sata2 BIOS 1.90
Windows XP-Home SP2 (Fully up to date)
AMD64 3700+ San Diego 1M L2 Cache
A-Data 2x1gig DDR400 Vitesta Dual-Channel CAS-3
PowerColor X1950Pro 512MB PCI-Express
Audigy2-Value Sound Card
2 X 36 Gig WD Raptor's 16M Buffer in RAID-0 ( oops, Very True the Raptor's weren't cheap$) Very Nice Load times in the Games though hehe.
Ultra X-Connect Modular 500Watt Power.

Any Known Compatibility problems with above mentioned Parts ?.

I know i might here some complaints about an Ultra PSU. In Defense, Bought from Outpost.com some time back, after Mail in Rebate ( Which i Did get Btw), total price was only 15$ & at the time Modular seemed like a Good Air-Flow Enhancer. In reality, The Modular Cables are too Darn Rigid to really be all that much of a Benefit lol. PSU does have a Lifetime Warranty though.

BIOS/System/Hardware Settings.

I loaded Sata-Raid Drivers at Windows Install doing F6. Was i suppose to install any other Sata Drivers after the Windows Install ?

This Asrock seems to have come with a Default of Hyperthreading running at only 1600. Can I Change that to 2000 ?, How ? & Should I ?

The A-Data is running by Default at 157-Actual. Can i set that to run at 'On-paper' of 200 ?
How ? & Should I ?

Any Specific Drivers you Suggest ?

A BIOS Update ?

A Very Helpful Forum Patron, Robisbell, in my above mentioned Thread has commented that he thinks my Asrock MB has gone Bad.

Not to Degrade Robisbell's opinion in anyway, I've come to this thread to hopefully figure out that maybe i bought incompatible parts, or may have set up the Software improperly.


If the Asrock is bad then it's time to Build a Dual-Core System and I really have not done any research on what the Good Dual-Core & related parts are.

Thanks in Advance

 

[SynthDude2001]

I glanced at your thread and I've never heard of any problem quite like you're describing. I would suggest running memtest86 if you haven't already. Normally I would say that you might want to try a BIOS update, but I've gotten the impression that only stuff specific to the AM2 card has been updated since BIOS 1.90 (I believe I'm actually on 1.80 myself, right now).

I can't think of any obvious compatibility problems with your components, although I've never used the SATA RAID on this board. I will say though that I've had problems with the SATA (both I and II) drivers, I've been using the default Windows drivers for quite a while now (though I've been running Vista for a year now - have had the board for two).

You should have the 2.20 ULi chipset drivers installed if you don't already. I could probably dig up a link if you need them (I have one in the first post of the thread but it seems to be dead now, I haven't updated in quite a while).

Also, if you happen to have an extra hard drive laying around I think it would be worthwhile to try a temp XP install on it without installing the SATA/RAID drivers and see if you get the same issue (like I said, I don't really trust them -- but I kind of doubt they'd cause this kind of issue).

That's about all I can think of at the moment...

 

[WT]

if you happen to have an extra hard drive laying around I think it would be worthwhile to try a temp XP install on it without installing the SATA/RAID drivers

What Synth said .. I totally concur on that point. You've done a bang-up job to this point with your diagnostics, but if it does turn out to be a board issue, they are always very horrible to troubleshoot.
Run Memtest next to determine if that is an issue.
Lastly, I'd try replacing the CMOS battery, or just try and boot with it out of the board.

I'm pulling all of my Asrock tricks out of the bag here, trying to glean my memories of what I've read over literally dozens of pages of info on this board. Good luck with the continuing work on it as well.

Synth, do you still have your board operational ?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: WT
Synth, do you still have your board operational ?

Yep, dropped in a $60 X2 chip a few months back and it's still going strong. I can't complain.

(Well, I can complain about the fact that I'm still running a 9700 Pro...)

 

[crockman]

Thanks SynthDude2001 & WT

I'm going with the assumption that it's Bad Motherboard.

I'd rather not Upgrade to AM2 or Intel Equivalent until next year cause that would mean New CPU and New RAM & don't want to spend the Dollars atm.

I found these 3 Inexpensive (Something to last about 6 Months) 939's:

ECS KN1 Lite
ECS RX480
Foxconn

Any opinions on those 3 Boards ?

On paper that KN1 Lite looks like the Best Deal, Unless of course that ChipSet Fan is horribly Load.

Also, Can I get by with using my 20-Pin PSU on those 3 MB's ? I'll be doing No OC'ing at all, so Stock Reliability is what I'm looking for.

Thanks

 

[WT]

Well, thanks to the wonderful eVGA RMA program, my aged and beaten 7900GT card has been replaced by a 7950 GX2 card !! This is a dual card on one PCB, so in essence an SLI one slot card, so guess what board is the beneficiary of this card ?? Yep, the Asrock is once again brought back from the sinking depths of obsolescence, with enough left in the tank to run just about anything that I am currently playing. Anyone else running this card on the board ?? A few Google searches show some possible problems, with a confusing thread on OCWorkbench noting that the board may only run one of the two cores, but no official confirmation on that conclusion.
I've updated to the 2.31C BIOS already, as I also picked up a Black Edition 5000+ chip (yet another upgrade, this damn board is costing me some $$, but .. dayam .. I just LOVE hardware upgrades ~!!) so if anyone has any solid info on it, post back.

Even if the board only runs one core, it has 512mb RAM (up from the 7900GT's 256) and offers the built in HDCP hardware that no other 7x00 series cards offers, so I'm a happy camper. Thank you, eVGA !!

 

[WT]

*Knock knock* .. its me again ...

I'm returning to post my success with this upgrade, and a few links showing the project thus far. I just popped the AM2CPU card in, along with a 5000+BE chip and 4GB of Super Talent DDR2-800 RAM, as well as a Cooler Master Hyper TX HSF. The total bill was $200 for the upgrade, but I really did enjoy the end result, as it turned out to be a very nice, easy upgrade.

Here's the parts assembled: Upgrade time

Side view of the innards: Innards

CPU fan, doing a nice job for only $1.99 AR: CPU fan

Video card of choice: 7950gx2

So far, I upped the multi to 11.5 for an easy 3.0ghz, with temps holding at 31c, so I'll try for 3.4 by the end of the week. 3dMark06 ended up at 7567, which is right around where I planned on getting to. With some tweaking, I think I can squeeze 8k from this old jalopy of a rig.

Edit: Now at 3.2 and holding steady, with temps still at 32c idle. Time for some Orthos testing.

My only weird issue so far is that Windows only report 2.3gb of RAM available. I'd understand if it was 2.8-3.12, but ... 2.3 ??? What am I missing in the BIOS to free up that extra 700-800mb of RAM ??

Edit: Looks like the 7950gx2 is causing a huge loss of RAM, as Windows is reserving 1gb just for video, even tho the card can only address 512mb of the RAM allocated to each of the two units. Oh well, I'll pull the 2x2gb sticks and pop the 2x1gb sticks back in for now.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: WT
[...]

My only weird issue so far is that Windows only report 2.3gb of RAM available. I'd understand if it was 2.8-3.12, but ... 2.3 ??? What am I missing in the BIOS to free up that extra 700-800mb of RAM ??

Edit: Looks like the 7950gx2 is causing a huge loss of RAM, as Windows is reserving 1gb just for video, even tho the card can only address 512mb of the RAM allocated to each of the two units. Oh well, I'll pull the 2x2gb sticks and pop the 2x1gb sticks back in for now.

You could also take this as an opportunity to upgrade to a 64-bit version of Windows... (preferably Vista since XP64 seems to have less driver support)

Good to hear that you had a smooth AM2 upgrade. I doubt I'll do it myself (due to a recent 939 X2 purchase), but it's definitely nice to have the option. Especially with DDR2 being dirt-cheap these days (and I just paid $130 for 2GB of DDR1 earlier this year ).

 

[Somniferum]

I'm having a weird issue maybe someone can help me with. I just bought my first SATA hard drive: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T-Series 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache. Plugged it into the JMicron SATA II controller. Had to use IDE mode in order to partition and format the drive in XP, but once I did that it worked fine. Created a 20Gb system partition C: and a 446Gb partition D: and copied files over from my old IDE drive. Switched drive letters, rebooted, changed the boot drive over in BIOS, and everything worked great at first.

Here's the issue: If I try to download a file onto the D: partition, often the browser freezes up. I can still move the mouse, but I can't end the browser task, even using Task Manager or Alt-F4. This happens both with Firefox 2 and IE7. The machine becomes unstable, and when I try to shut down or reboot, it gives me an error saying "Windows is currently working with a file." But I can never close the browser -- in Task Manager, I get another task called "Ending Task" which quickly goes away, leaving Firefox or IE still running. Tried a clean install of Firefox 2, no help. The only way to stop it is to turn off the power switch and reboot that way, which I hate doing because I know Windows can get corrupted (it's happened to me before).

Here's the weird thing: I can download files to the C: partition on the same drive with no problems!

Another intermittent problem occurs when I copy files from C: to D: partition. Often Explorer will freeze up, exactly like the browser does in the above situation. Can't kill it using Task Manager, can't shut down ("Windows is currently working with a file" error), have to use the power switch to reboot.

I have tried both SATA and IDE modes in BIOS, as well as Normal and Strong driving, with no difference.

Also, I tried plugging the drive into the ULI SATA I controller instead. The drive requires a jumper for SATA I operation, which I installed. In this configuration, not only do the above freezes still occur, but Windows XP freezes on boot-up about half the time! So that's no good.

Any ideas? I can run games and other programs off the D: drive with no problems at all, and it performs great on benchmarks. It doesn't seem like a faulty drive, since it works fine in every other respect. However, it's really odd that the problem occurs when using both the SATAII and SATAI controllers.

 

[SynthDude2001]

It's been quite a while since I've run XP on this board, but I seem to recall not particularly liking the SATA/SATAII drivers provided by ULi/JMicron because I was convinced they caused similar freezes from time to time.

You say you've tried all applicable SATA/IDE modes in the BIOS - have you tried this with uninstalling the controller drivers? Specifically, using the SATAII controller in IDE mode with no drivers installed is just about the only thing I can think of to troubleshoot this (that you haven't already done - I assume you installed the JMicron drivers immediately after installing Windows).

I would agree that this sounds more like a quirky controller and/or drivers rather than a failing drive - but just to eliminate any doubt, I'd see if Samsung has any drive diagnostic software available, and run it just to be sure...

 

[Somniferum]

Thanks for the ideas, SynthDude2001.

I downloaded and ran Samsung's drive diagnostic program (called HUtil) and the drive passed all tests, including a full surface scan which took a couple hours. So the drive itself seems to be fine.

I tried uninstalling the JMicron SATA II driver, but even with BIOS set to IDE mode, XP automatically reinstalls the driver after rebooting without giving me any choice in the matter. :| Thanks, Microsoft!

I found an older version of the JMicron driver (v102) and installed that instead. I still get the freezes, and HD Tach reports that burst speed is cut nearly in half, so I'll probably go back to the new driver (v207).

In the midst of all this, I noticed something really odd. I have my old 160Gb Caviar IDE drive still installed as a backup. Turns out, downloading a file to that drive also causes the browser to freeze! So that seems to rule out the SATA connectors or drivers as the cause.

What a weird problem. I can download files to the C: partition all day with no issues, but D: partition and E: (which is a physically different drive, on a different interface) both cause freezes. Copying from C: to D: also causes freezes. But the drive itself is perfectly fine.

I'm thinking now that this must be a deeper system issue. As much as I hate to do it, maybe I should try reformatting C: and reinstalling Windows XP from scratch. Other than that, I'm pretty much out of ideas.

 

[Somniferum]

Update:

I used HUtil to perform a low-level format of the new Samsung drive, then repartitioned and installed XP from scratch. It now works perfectly, in SATA II mode using the latest JMicron drivers.

The moral of this story seems to be: Don't try to clone your XP boot partition from an IDE drive to a SATA drive. While it works fine to clone from one IDE drive to another, cloning from IDE to SATA seems to cause random storage-related freezes (on this board at least). Perform a clean XP install on the new boot partition to prevent this issue.

I'm loving this board again

 

[Komete]

I sure hope there are some users still useing this board and reading this thread every now and then.

I'm upgrading to Vista 32 soon and would like to run raid 0. My setup would be as follows
AMD 3600+ x2
2x WD Raptors 32gb in raid 0
1 WD sataII 320gb on the SATAII
1 8800gt
Audigy 2

1gig ddr400

Now my question is what drivers do I need if any to install vista and where do I get them? I read a few pages back someone not useing any drivers but I didn't see anything about raid 0 or not. I looked on the asusrock website and didn't see any vista drivers. Any advice would be appriciated.

Also I want to upgrade my memory to 2 gigs. Will I see a performance hit by going to 4x 512? With my high overclocks I'm already useing 2T

 

[Komete]

Originally posted by: Komete
I sure hope there are some users still useing this board and reading this thread every now and then.

I'm upgrading to Vista 32 soon and would like to run raid 0. My setup would be as follows
AMD 3600+ x2
2x WD Raptors 32gb in raid 0
1 WD sataII 320gb on the SATAII
1 8800gt
Audigy 2

1gig ddr400

Now my question is what drivers do I need if any to install vista and where do I get them? I read a few pages back someone not useing any drivers but I didn't see anything about raid 0 or not. I looked on the asusrock website and didn't see any vista drivers. Any advice would be appriciated.

Also I want to upgrade my memory to 2 gigs. Will I see a performance hit by going to 4x 512? With my high overclocks I'm already useing 2T

bump to see if anyone can answer my questions.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I used to run 4x512MB at 2T on this motherboard about two years ago, 2T is really a non-issue as far as I'm concerned (in fact, this board seems to have issues with 1T anyway so I'm still running 2T on my 2x1GB sticks). Of course, if you're already running 2T, there won't be any performance drop at all -- you should keep dual-channel with the 4x512MB configuration.

I will admit that I've never used the RAID on this motherboard, so I can't really say whether you would need to use drivers other than the ones that come with Vista. I assume you'll be using the RAID0 for the OS install, so you'll want to have the drivers available (on another hard drive, CD, whatever) just in case when you boot to the Vista DVD. If the installer doesn't see your RAID0 array, then you'll need the drivers. The drivers I'm referring to are here; the link text on the 939Dual-SATA2 page doesn't indicate that they include Vista drivers, but the filename indicates otherwise. Also note that in some (many?) cases, XP (32/64 as appropriate) drivers will work in Vista anyway.

That should be all you need to install Vista...you'll need to download drivers from Creative and Nvidia of course, but that won't prevent you from installing in the first place.

Let me know (here in the thread or by PM) if you have any more questions. I seem to be the self-appointed "ASRock expert" here, I guess.


Also, as a general note for anyone else who may still stop in from time to time -- I finally ditched the ancient 9700 Pro and replaced it with an X1900XT. This motherboard seems to be pretty much immortal with all the different upgrades/config changes I've done (2x512MB->4x512MB->2x1GB, Opty 170->A64 3200->X2 3800, 6800GT->(Radeon 8500)->X1900XT->9700 Pro->X1900XT again...:laugh:[/i]). I can't believe I started this thread 2.5 years ago. :Q

 

[Komete]

Hey Synthdude, I just wanted to let you know I got up and running in vista. I ran into a few problems along the way. This is the raid driver you need when upgrading. The other is for when you are within an OS. http://www.asrock.com/mb/from....SATA2&s=939&T=D&ID=217

Also I had a problem with vista's network adapter not liking my Linksys router. Everytime I'd set it up and reboot the system would hang in shut down. That was solved by using the 939dual-vsta network adapter.

MY sataII drive is not recognized in SATAII mode and vista isn't supplying a driver even though it is enabled in the bios. I'm going to give the 939dual-VSTA sata driver a go and see what that does.

BTW what does it mean when it says drive the hard drive HARD or Normal for SataII drive in the bios?

I upgraded to a 3600x2 cpu and had to upgrade my bios before it could be recognized. I'm using the latest one but I liked the OCU bios a ton better. Wished that they had a version that supported my cpu. Also the cpu runs a heck of a lot hotter than my opteron single core (DUH). I've already tried over clocking and got it 2.6 with no problems but until my heatsink comes in I'm running at defaults. CPU temp got up to 58c and the system locked up.

I'll report back. thanks for the help.

 

[Komete]

UPDATE: DO NOT USE THE 939dual-VSTA sata driver for the 939dual sataII in vista... Bad mojo!