ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA

[BALISTX]

I friend at work recommended this board for my current situation. As you can tell by my specs I am currently running a ATI AIW 9800 Pro as well as PC2700 DDR333 memory. I want to make the switch to C2D but I can't afford to buy all the parts at once. He suggested get this board to use in the meantime as I can still run my ATI AIW 9800 Pro and use my new PC2-6400 DDR2-800 and get an C2D E4300.

I haven't been able to find any reviews but from customer reviews at NCIX they seemed to not really have any complaints.

ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA - $80.92 @ NCIX

[Babrbarossa]

Good board, I guess-- just not an overclocker-- you can't adjust the voltages at all.

Here's some readin fer ya:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...l=775Dual-VSTA

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/377/14/

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...?cid=6&id=1998

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810

[sswilson]

Certainly an interesting looking board.

I've run two Asrock mATX boards (S754) and while they had the same problem with having little ability to up CPU voltages they still did allow some OC which can't be said for a lot of the lower end mATX boards. (There's a voltage mod for the one's I've had, could be there's one for this board as well.)

Last time I looked at the Asrock site, it looked like they had a pretty decent modding community.

The only thing I'd double check on is if DDR2 800 will run on it.

[BALISTX]

No the DDR2-800MHz won't run on it but I still have my 1GB of DDR333 MHz I can run it until I upgrade to another board later on down the road.

[Babrbarossa]

Here's a quote from the anandtech article that I linked to below- with this board, they found in real-world performance, memory wasn't a big factor. I would say that it's an excellent choice for a budget upgrade using that memory.

"This story told us the choice of components like the CPU, motherboard, or graphics card is far more important to the overall performance of the system than our memory selection on this platform. While this is not surprising and certainly not unexpected, it just reinforces the fact that at this price point you can certainly extend the life of your existing DDR memory."

[BALISTX]

I read the article and the one from Legit reviews. From the sounds of things it's a good board, sure it's not an overclocker but to tide me over untill I have the money to afford a better GPU and mainboard I think it will do me good and I'll get some nice performance from the stock E4300

[sswilson]

If you do pick one up, let us know how it works out for you.

Might be just the ticket for those of us running S939 boards who can't afford to shell out $300 on DDR2 at the same time as we upgrade our cpu+mobo.

[BALISTX]

Oh for sure, I'll do my own review on it . It will be a couple of pays, one pay I'll get the board and the next I'll get the CPU.

[enaberif]

If you need a c2d board right now that will work and allow you to use your computer the board is perfectly fine and does what its supposed to :)

[jnliten]

I was also considering this board to ease myself into C2D also but with price drops coming around April I decided to wait and get a complete new system. But if you do get this I'de really like to hear how it performs.