ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA Questions

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 11, 2006

Sorry for some of these n00bish questions in advance lol

I'm considering getting this motherboard soon and keeping my current corsair DDR400 ram and 7800gs until I upgrade to pci-express.

First question is this: If I were to get a C2D e6600 and use that with my current ddr400 ram....how would the board handle it? I ask this because the FSB on the 6600 as far as I can tell is 266mhz and my ram is currently only running at 220 (slightly oced). So if it even works with my current ram, I wouldn't be able to overclock at all because of my DDR ram?

Second question: I have read that this board only has a PCI-express x4 slot instead of a x16, how much would this affect performance later on if I got a card like an 8800gts or something?

Thanks guys in advance for the responses!

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 11, 2006

Also, purely from a gaming standpoint, would I be better to upgrade to a socket 939 mobo that has sli (like the Asus A8N-SLi or something)? I could pair that with an opty 165 and considering that board was made to run with plain old ddr ram....

It also has 2 true pci-express x16 slots as well.

I'm not as concerned about processor speed as I am with graphics card performance (my games are running just fine now with my A64 3000+ let alone an oc'ed opty 165)

What do you guys think I should do?

jtjuska · Dec 11, 2006

The ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA is a fine board for what it is and the performace is pretty good even when paired with DDR ram. I would say that it is not a bad way to move into a E6600 if you plan on getting yourself a different mobo later. As for whether to do it this way or a Skt 939, I would say that the 775DUAL-VSTA has the most room for upgrade into a very powerful system. I hope that I can better answer your questions as they pop up

~jtjuska

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 11, 2006

Thanks for the reply. In reality, how much of a performance difference is there between an opteron 165 and a C2D e6400 or e6600? Also (yes I know this is a n00bish question) overclocking is limited to how high your ram can overclock as well as your cpu right? If this is the case, I can't overclock much of anything with my corsair valueram thats running at 220x2 right now...

jtjuska · Dec 11, 2006

With my 775DUAL-VSTA I hit 300FSB (in a 2:1 divider) as for difference between the E6400 or E6600 and a 165, it is pretty big as far as CPU performance goes. I know there are quite a few people around here that were on 165's and went over to both a 6400 and 6600 and were very impressed with the performance. Bang for $ the best place to be is C2D right now IMO. Don't expect the 775DUAL-VSTA to overclock much, but more consider it something to hold you till something better.

~jtjuska

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 11, 2006

Okay, and how much do you think the x4 pci-express slot affects performance compared to a x16 slot. Will this performance defecit increase with a more powerful video card (like an 8800gtx)?

Thanks for your replies man!

jtjuska · Dec 11, 2006

That I can't say really, the most powerful card I ever ran in it was a 7800GT and I didn't notice the difference but benches showed a difference (ill have to run some benches, but it may be a few days until I can get my 6600 back in that board). I don't remember how much of a difference it was but I will try to get you some benches in that board as soon as I can just to give you an idea of the difference

.

~jtjuska

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 11, 2006

jtjuska said:
That I can't say really, the most powerful card I ever ran in it was a 7800GT and I didn't notice the difference but benches showed a difference (ill have to run some benches, but it may be a few days until I can get my 6600 back in that board). I don't remember how much of a difference it was but I will try to get you some benches in that board as soon as I can just to give you an idea of the difference .

~jtjuska

Wow man, thank you!

maxfly · Dec 13, 2006

im not sure if this will help or not.i just dug out my old notes.these are the results of my tests with the asrock dual775
[email protected] bfg7800gs stock 400/1250 3dmark03-14442 05-6000
x1900xt stock 03-18741 05-10691
maybe by comparing 3dmark scores it will give you a idea?

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 13, 2006

hmmm, how the heck does my 3dmark05 score beat yours with the 7800gs. The C2D 6600 is like a couple times better than my a64 3000+....

I'm definetely confused now lol

maxfly · Dec 13, 2006

you got me lol.maybe because the gs is at stock?im sure the 7800 is choking the 6600 but i really cant say for sure.sry didnt mean to make things worse :/
edit:i believe those are pre cold bug scores with the gs.i had to edit the bios to keep it from throttling.unfortunately the asrock is out of commision so i cant retest.

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 14, 2006

maxfly said:
i believe those are pre cold bug scores

Ah I see. Yea I remember reading a lot about the cold bug....

Immortal_Hero · Dec 14, 2006

One thing to note a PCI-E 4x slot is not a full length PCI-E slot and there are very few GFX cards for them. It is about half as long as an 8x or a 16x slot.

Newegg offers no PCI-E 4x cards.

I guess after looking at your board....

I see that it is a full slot just slowed down. I am assuming this is because it runs on the same bus as the AGP. I would say this is really a no good mobo for a C2D... does it even support C2D? If you run you ram on a divider on an Intel box you are gonna take a huge performance hit. If you run a divider on an AMD box all is well. I would vote for either getting a C2D, new mobo and some DDR2 or you proposed AMD setup.

mcoleg · Dec 14, 2006

Immortal_Hero said:
If you run you ram on a divider on an Intel box you are gonna take a huge performance hit. If you run a divider on an AMD box all is well.

are you quite sure about the huge performance hit?

jtjuska · Dec 14, 2006

The PCIe x16 slot on the ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA runs electrically at 4x not 16x so there is a performance hit there, but not as much as say an 8800 would take. As for the performance hit from a divider, yes its there but I would say that most of the performance hit that you get is from being a chipset designed to support so many different things.

My opinion of the board will always stand as this, If you want to move to Core 2 Duo and need to keep the cost down by keeping older ram and even a AGP card then its a great board for that purpose. For a board to use continually there are much better out there, but this one is great as an interim board.

~jtjuska

maxfly · Dec 14, 2006

^^agreed.it fits its purpose.the small performance hits with pcie and ddr are negligable.when you take into account the actual cost of upgrading your entire rig.if you have the money to upgrade everything sure it makes better sense to go with something else.if not this can make the transition much easier on the wallet.

jtjuska · Dec 14, 2006

maxfly said:
^^agreed.it fits its purpose.the small performance hits with pcie and ddr are negligable.when you take into account the actual cost of upgrading your entire rig.if you have the money to upgrade everything sure it makes better sense to go with something else.if not this can make the transition much easier on the wallet.

Exactly, and thats why I got it at the time I did. I needed a board for the purpose it was created. It did that and now its becoming a Cely D machine with a cheapo gfx card for web browsing for my g/f

.

~jtjuska

blitzkrieg1110 · Dec 15, 2006

Ehhh...I'll probably just go with a board like the Abit KN8-SLi and pair it up with an Opteron 165. Really the CPU is not as important to me as graphics performance is in games. I don't do any video encoding or much of anything super CPU intensive. Plus, the Abit will give me an opportunity to upgrade to SLi in the future and has true pci-express x16 slots.

Like I said earlier, my A64 3000+ is still doing gaming just nicely but I want to upgrade to pci-express so that will probably be my best route.

jtjuska · Dec 15, 2006

Good call for you then!!! I am just trying to put things into the perspective I see them, and if this works for you more power to you!!!

~jtjuska

ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA Questions

blitzkrieg1110

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

jtjuska

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

jtjuska

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

jtjuska

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

maxfly

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

maxfly

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

Immortal_Hero

Member

mcoleg

Member

jtjuska

Member

maxfly

Member

jtjuska

Member

blitzkrieg1110

Member

jtjuska

Member

Similar threads