MWAVE "ASRock 939Dual-SATA2" + Opteron 144

[duragezic]

Nice summary, eventerke. Welcome to the forums as well!


Basically I'll be getting the Opty for overclocking purposes, and although I'd like to try the ASRock board, I can get a NF4 Ultra SLI board for about the same price when buying it with the eVGA video card. The 0.05 V over stock is pretty disappointing too, considering how much my mobile Barton is past default 1.45 V, I set to 1.75 V tho my mobo undervolts a bit.

 

[eventerke]

Thanks duragezic - I'm a long-time lurker first-time poster

Yeah - the ASRock is a great transitional board. I had just gotten the 6800Ultra after all kinds of hell trying to get an X800 to work on my MSI VIA-based-board (mobile Barton running 2.4Ghz).
I was going to hold out on an x64 - but the rumors on the limited availability made me jump.
If you're starting with a PCI-Express card, nForce4 seems like a better choice.
I'll go to a 7800GTX or X1800XT when the prices go down a little.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: duragezic
Nice summary, eventerke. Welcome to the forums as well!


Basically I'll be getting the Opty for overclocking purposes, and although I'd like to try the ASRock board, I can get a NF4 Ultra SLI board for about the same price when buying it with the eVGA video card. The 0.05 V over stock is pretty disappointing too, considering how much my mobile Barton is past default 1.45 V, I set to 1.75 V tho my mobo undervolts a bit.

I don't know, its probably a YMMV kind of thing. I was surprised that I could crank my 3000+ venice up to ~2450 on stock voltage. But it primed for 13 or so hours. I guess I was pessimistic since I bought a barton mobile for my last machine and it turned out to be kind of a lame duck.

If I'd had a PCI-E card, I probably would have gone with a more popular board with better overclocking features though.

dabuddha: I don't know if I would go so far as to say its the most stable board, I don't have enough experience with socket939 to make that distinction. I would just say I don't think you'll get into to any trouble with it if you just want to run things stock. Most of its quirks are only of concern to the overclocker.

 

[robertk2012]

Is this still available?

 

[Wedge1]

How would the Opteron 144 compare to a 2.8GHz P4 that I currently use? I just don't know enough about the Opterons or AMD for that matter, but this sounds like a great deal for the gamer who doesn't want to change over to all new technology. So can anybody give me an idea of what the Opteron speed is when compared to a 2.8 Intel P4?

 

[Wedge1]

Not to go off-topci from the Asrock board, but for guys that still want to stick with AGP and DDR RAM, wouldn't this board be just as good? ASUS A8V-MX

 

[Cygni]

The ASUS A8V-MX isnt quite a good choice. All A64/Sempron/Opteron still use DDR1 memory, so thats not much of a concern. The K8M800 chipset that the A8V is based on does not offer support for PCI-Express 16x videocards, unfortunatly, and its speed in gaming is going to be far far slower than the 939Dual-SATA2, which offers the highest AGP gaming speeds around for the AMD platform, bar none.

To answer your other question, the 144 Opteron wont absolutly crush a 2.8 P4 or anything. At stock speeds, it would be faster in gaming, but it wouldnt "feel" much faster than the P4 (assuming its an HT P4). However, once overclocked a healthy ammount, the 144 Opteron would absolutly blow away the P4 in gaming, and would feel darn smooth too.

If you want to break into gaming, its a tough combo to beat. The Opty 144 has amazing gaming performance, even before its overclocked. Combine this with the 939Dual-SATA2, lets you keep your current AGP card with no sacrifice to performance... AND allows you to upgrade to a newer PCI-Ex 16x graphics card AND a new AMD M2 socket proccesser in the future... and you have a pretty darn amazing system.

 

[Wedge1]

Awesome, thanks for the reply. I went ahead and read Anand's review of this board and I'm pretty much sold. I might wait for a future version though, just for any improvements and additions.

While speaking to a friend of mine about Opterons, he points out that a good dual-core choice would be the 165. I checked the specs on it and it seems close to the 3800+ but a clock of 1.8GHz vs. 2.0 of the 3800+, yet 2 x 1MB L2 cache on the 165 vs. 512 on the 3800+. Would the 165 be a better choice than the 3800+ for gaming and multi-tasking (my sole reasons for going dual core)? Or are they so close in performance that it's irrelevant? I'm new to AMD, particularly opterons since they were never meant to be a desktop item.

 

[Navid]

Is this still available?

 

[lebe0024]

FYI, Using the standard 1.2 bios that shipped with the board, as well as a 2x512mb Corsair Value Select, I have my retail opteron 144 (with retail HSF) at the maximum this bios will allow me to go at: 274 * 9 = 2466. I haven't tried the Overclockers Workbench BIOS 1 or 2, which will allow you to go to 400, because I'm happy with this and I haven't had one single instability issue at all, ever.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: EXman
My BH-5 gonna handle OCing this beast? should I get some DDR550 OCZ?

Now that was a great board :thumbsup:

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: lebe0024
FYI, Using the standard 1.2 bios that shipped with the board, as well as a 2x512mb Corsair Value Select, I have my retail opteron 144 (with retail HSF) at the maximum this bios will allow me to go at: 274 * 9 = 2466. I haven't tried the Overclockers Workbench BIOS 1 or 2, which will allow you to go to 400, because I'm happy with this and I haven't had one single instability issue at all, ever.

What speed are you running your corsair VR at? I'm running my venice at the same clockspeed speed...1.4v. My corsair craps out at like 215, so I'm running ~175 til I figure something out.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: lebe0024
FYI, Using the standard 1.2 bios that shipped with the board, as well as a 2x512mb Corsair Value Select, I have my retail opteron 144 (with retail HSF) at the maximum this bios will allow me to go at: 274 * 9 = 2466. I haven't tried the Overclockers Workbench BIOS 1 or 2, which will allow you to go to 400, because I'm happy with this and I haven't had one single instability issue at all, ever.

What speed are you running your corsair VR at? I'm running my venice at the same clockspeed speed...1.4v. My corsair craps out at like 215, so I'm running ~175 til I figure something out.

I'd like to know this also, as this is the main reason I was hoping to get a 146 vice a 144. With the FSB stuck at 274 (I do realize that earlier BIOS's do not have this cap, but they do have some other issues that were corrected in the later BIOS revs) and only a CPU mult. of x9, this does not work for my Corsair VS RAM well.

 

[lebe0024]

I haven't tried running my ram above 200 MHz, because for games there's almost no difference. So, always choose the ram multiplier that will get it below 200. I think I have it on 2/3, so my ram is at 274 * 2/3 = 183. I also have my ram at 2T, because this board doesn't seem to run 1T.

However, even at 183MHz, 2.5 3 3 8 2T, my computer benchmarks slightly higher for games than anandtech's (I have a 7800GT with 77.77 drivers; I use anand's various 7800GT benchmarks to compare against, so at least my system is doing better than anand's reference NF4/ FX55/ 200MHz 2-2-2-1T ram).

 

[PingSpike]

Bah...I switched ram modules with my wife's PC which has newer corsair models bought a few months ago...and they went right up to 225 on stock timings, 2.7v. Looks like corsair has improved their ram a lot since about a year and half ago.

Works fine for her since her overclock hits the default speeds anyway.

 

[Ike0069]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Bah...I switched ram modules with my wife's PC which has newer corsair models bought a few months ago...and they went right up to 225 on stock timings, 2.7v. Looks like corsair has improved their ram a lot since about a year and half ago.

Works fine for her since her overclock hits the default speeds anyway.

So you are now running ~270 HTT with a 5/6 RAM divider? If so, that's awesome for Value RAM.
I have 2x1 Corsair VS sticks, and mine won't even boot at 215.

 

[straightalker]

To those deciding on what board to choose...

Nvidia Nforce4 boards and all other boards with various chipsets each has it's own unique set of quirks. That said, the Asrock939duel has quite a few positive reviews and quite a vast forum achive to search for answers and learn. I'm not defending Asrock just stating facts. It's a proven performer.

Choosing all depends on balancing budgit and a zillion other things. I choose this board for the above reasons and because it was on sale with an Opty 144 for 217$ shipped (from Mwave). And it had true AGP as well as "fairly decent" overclocking headroom compared to all the Geforce6150 multimedia integrated graphics boards which only the Foxconn could overclock "some". To around 2.3ghz tops apparently on the Foxx with the opty 144. But the Foxx had no high quality HD Sound like the Asus version of the 6150 chipset.

So it really became a safe fallback position to snapup the Asrock, slap the AGP in, and get the hell away from a much slower computer. I've not overclocked yet but will as soon as this board breaks in about a week more yet. Very stable on stock speeds so far. Not one weird thing whatsoever. Runs incredible cool as well. heeheehe.

For 65$ it's a good board to learn basic overclocking on without worrying about frying something twice or three times more expensive. You can put that money towards the video card.

Board: ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
CPU: AMD Opteron 144 (CAB2E 0545 MPMW)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix PC3200 2x512
Video: BMG Geforce5500 128mb
Case Antec Sonata II 450watt

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Ike0069

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Bah...I switched ram modules with my wife's PC which has newer corsair models bought a few months ago...and they went right up to 225 on stock timings, 2.7v. Looks like corsair has improved their ram a lot since about a year and half ago.

Works fine for her since her overclock hits the default speeds anyway.

So you are now running ~270 HTT with a 5/6 RAM divider? If so, that's awesome for Value RAM.
I have 2x1 Corsair VS sticks, and mine won't even boot at 215.

Well it measures out to 222-225 depending on what I'm looking at. I'm running 274 HTT with the 166 memory setting, so cpu/11. Memory did 36 passes of memtest86 at those settings. Either way...I wasn't actually expecting it to work when I swapped the modules. I thought if I was lucky I could hit the ~225 with loose timings at 2.7. But after that passed a few times I tightened them down to stock and ran it overnight in memtest.

My other set booted fine with 3-4-4-10 timings at that speed, but got errors in memtest almost instantly. I was getting errors on it at like 218 while I was testing...I don't remember the timings I was using then though. I've only just started to be more diligent about writing down my overclocking results...because I always end up wishing I knew what they were.

An odd thing though is that the board usually reports a different cpu speed every time I boot up. I've seen 2.45-2.48. The "official" speed is suppose to be 2466, but I cpu-z reports a little less then that.

Seems pretty damn stable though. I was screwing around with the Hypertransport bus speed last night at 1096. It seemed fine, but after seeing a nice breakdown over on neoseeker this morning about hypertransport speed hits I'm just going to drop it down to 822 and pronounce this badboy fully stable.

I'll do another overnight stress test when it gets hot in the summer.

 

[lebe0024]

I really feel like I sacrificed NOTHING by buying this board/CPU combo, except lack of SLI (big deal). It has run 100% stable, It's faster than NF4 clock for clock in most games, it overclockes VERY well, has a passive NB heatsink, was fully compatible with my older PSU, can use both AGP and PCIX with no perfomance penalty. AND it was $65. If you're on the fence about this motherboard, buy it.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: lebe0024
I really feel like I sacrificed NOTHING by buying this board/CPU combo, except lack of SLI (big deal). It has run 100% stable, It's faster than NF4 clock for clock in most games, it overclockes VERY well, has a passive NB heatsink, was fully compatible with my older PSU, can use both AGP and PCIX with no perfomance penalty. AND it was $65. If you're on the fence about this motherboard, buy it.

I will as soon as I find a CPU.

 

[ishxspidey]

same here, can't find a CPU unless on ebay but it's way to expensive....do you think the board will overclock well with some crappy memory such as a stick of patriot memory(512mb) and standard ocz stick(512mb), also what heatsink do you recommend with this board, you think the zalman CNPS7700-CU is sufficient or maybe even the amd stock Heatsink?

 

[Cygni]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: lebe0024
I really feel like I sacrificed NOTHING by buying this board/CPU combo, except lack of SLI (big deal). It has run 100% stable, It's faster than NF4 clock for clock in most games, it overclockes VERY well, has a passive NB heatsink, was fully compatible with my older PSU, can use both AGP and PCIX with no perfomance penalty. AND it was $65. If you're on the fence about this motherboard, buy it.

I will as soon as I find a CPU.

Mwave has the Opty 144 S939 in stock right now for $159.

 

[ishxspidey]

couldn't resist the urge, bought the opty and asrock, hopefully it overclocks decent enough, now I just need a decent vid card and i'm set

 

[Navid]

I cannot find any warranty support information on the Asrock web site. What kind of warranty is offered by Asrock for this motherboard?

 

[SEAL62505]

I take it the two listings for the board at different prices are the same??? $64.50 & 65
Thanks!