Comment thread for the "Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA" review

[sswilson]

Comments, Questions, or Suggestions greatly appreciated.

[sswilson]

I know that at least a few regular posters have either been looking at this board or at least tried it out.

This is the newer version of the CoreDual-VSTA, which (big surprise!!!!) supports 4 core C2Ds (although why anybody would want to put one of those on this board is beyond me.... :) ).

It actually works fairly well even though it has its quirks.

[Shadowed]

Very, very interesting, Great job !!
You have sated my curiosity on this board and the limited pci-e issue.
I have been contemplating upgrade options. I could find a dual core 939 but right now they are a lot more expensive than thier AM2 counterparts.
Right now there are not many options left for 939 owners. (Thanks AMD)
I like to see reviews like these where a person can step up without a large initial outlay of cash.

[sswilson]

Glad you liked it.

I was in the same boat as you, and quite frankly just left it a little too long before trying to snap up a S939 DC or opty.

As it stands now, an e4300 can be had for around $140 and they would probably OC fairly well on this board while allowing an upgrade path that's a lot easier on the pocketbook (not over the long term, but I generally don't buy all of my gear at once... I build it up over time rather than drop $1000 all at once.... it's a lot easier to slip it past my wife that way.... :) ).

It's pretty hard to find a S939 DC that isn't either a 3800 or at best a 4200, and I wanted something a bit heftier than that.

[Shadowed]

I am still sitting on the fence. Not sure which side I am going to jump off yet. (AMD/Intel)
I'll just bide my time for a couple of months I think.
In the meantime there are a few other toys/gadgets I'm looking at. *cough*digital*cough*projector

[sswilson]

Update on the continuing build......

Just dropped in a pair of 1g PC6400 Supertalent sticks and the overclocking features continue to frustrate me.

The chipset doesn't recognise DDR2 800 so I wasn't expecting to hit 800, but once you start OCing, the "magic gremlins" inside this bios do their own thing with memory regardless of what settings you input.

Still have some playing to do, but (again much of this is because of the CPU 266 fsb) at the same OC as before I'm only showing 295 (ddrII 590) 4-4-4-10 (I'm pretty sure it sets these no matter what mem you are running) (2t) 1-1.

`06 scores are virtually the same.

Everest mem benchies are as follows.......

Read: DDR/DDRII 5616MB / 6826
Write: DDR/DDRII 1590MB / 1133 (I blame (2t) for this)
Latencies: DDR/DDRII 78.6 / 73.1 (lower is better)

I guess I'm going to have to play with the OC settings again to see if there is a sweet spot where the magic gremlins don't come into play.....

[sswilson]

Managed to wrestle some better timings out of the gremlins........ (figured out that the board does not want to run @ (1t) ).

Now running @ 295 3-3-3-8.

Throughput is now a lot better..... Read-7238MB Write-1707MB Latency-69.1

[ArneJoh]

I have had ASRock Dual-VSTA 775 for å while. And as i can see the only difference between this two boards are the support for quadcore on your board. It is the chipsett voltage that limit your overclock to about 300fsb. If you volt mod it you can reach up to the max input value(340fsb if i remember right). The need for more cpu voltage is only present if you have an 533 fsb cpu like the 805. This can be done doing an easy cpu pin modd they addes at vrzone.
There is also a couple of threads in the forum there for more info about modding this board etc.

But there is not much headroom anyway, most users does not reach near 340fsb even with vmodd. So if you shold use c2d and this boards i recommand the 800fsb e4300 or E2140. As you have found out in your review ddr2 wont gain you any more performance to speak of. But i recommand overclocking the pcie port to gain more performance, the freq. is multiplied by 4 times så it wil make an impact in bandwith.

[sswilson]

Yeah, I've seen a few references to the pin mod, but I'm not willing to muck about with my $300 chip to squeeze a bit more of an OC out of a board that was only intended as a bridge to a higher end board.

I do however intend to pick up an E4400 to slap onto this board once I'm done with it in my main rig (might try the mod then). :)

As far as the memory goes..... I'm getting a bit more performance out of ddrII 800, but if I were going to continue using the board, the performance boost doesn't justify buying ddrII vice the DDR you already own.

Thanks for your input.... I look forward to seeing you around here on the forums.

[reaverclan]

hi i just got this in the mail and ill tell u guys how it goes k I'm on budget so i got a AGP x1950 pro anyway at 256 bit 512mb's and I'm putting in a e6420 so yeah ill tell u how it goes by the way I'm in the USA lol