ASRock 775Dual-VSTA: Does DDR2 matter?
by Gary Key on August 8, 2006 6:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
System Configuration
Our memory benchmark system uses the following components:
Our test system represents a blend of performance and pricing requirements for a budget Core 2 Duo system. While the choice and wattage of the power supply could be varied to less expensive alternatives we believe having a high quality power supply is critical for system stability and overclocking potential. The performance of the Seagate 320GB drive is near the top of the performance charts while offering excellent capacity for a cost of around $95. If you are upgrading your hard drive with the rest of the system this drive should be at the top of your list. Our EVGA 7600GS video card choice represents a very good mid-range alternative and ensures you have respectable game performance at resolutions under 1280x1024 for less than $130.
Our board is the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA that features the VIA PT880 Pro Northbridge and VT8237A Southbridge with VRM and BIOS updates that now fully support Core 2 Duo. The ASRock 775Dual-VSTA is a very unusual board considering all of the available upgrade options and is available at a low entry price of $55.
The board is laid out nicely and certainly caters to those who value IDE and PCI devices. The VT8237A only supports two SATA 1.5Gbps drives but the board does support four IDE devices. The overall feature set of the VIA chipset is the same as the Biostar PT880 Pro board we reviewed a few months back.
Our memory benchmark system uses the following components:
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (Dual core 1.86GHz 2MB Unified Cache) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Patriot DDR-400 2 x 512MB Transcend JetRam DDR2-667 |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 320GB 7200.10 (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | VIA 5.09a |
| Video Card: | 1 x EVGA 7600GS PCI-E - All Standard Tests |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA 91.31 |
| CPU Cooling: | Stock Intel Heatsink |
| Power Supply: | OCZ PowerStream 520W |
| Motherboards: | ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (VIA PT880Pro) |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| BIOS: | AMI 1.50 |
Our test system represents a blend of performance and pricing requirements for a budget Core 2 Duo system. While the choice and wattage of the power supply could be varied to less expensive alternatives we believe having a high quality power supply is critical for system stability and overclocking potential. The performance of the Seagate 320GB drive is near the top of the performance charts while offering excellent capacity for a cost of around $95. If you are upgrading your hard drive with the rest of the system this drive should be at the top of your list. Our EVGA 7600GS video card choice represents a very good mid-range alternative and ensures you have respectable game performance at resolutions under 1280x1024 for less than $130.
Our board is the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA that features the VIA PT880 Pro Northbridge and VT8237A Southbridge with VRM and BIOS updates that now fully support Core 2 Duo. The ASRock 775Dual-VSTA is a very unusual board considering all of the available upgrade options and is available at a low entry price of $55.
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| Click to enlarge |
The board is laid out nicely and certainly caters to those who value IDE and PCI devices. The VT8237A only supports two SATA 1.5Gbps drives but the board does support four IDE devices. The overall feature set of the VIA chipset is the same as the Biostar PT880 Pro board we reviewed a few months back.
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Kougar - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
They mention the OCing details in their Conroe: Feeding the Monster article. IIRC this board was about 300FSB give or take 5. Not bad, considering the nForce4 & 5 series maxes out at 320 tops!poohbear - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
thanks for this great article, i hope ASrock's efforts w/ PCI-E/agp and ddr/ddr2 solutions gets noticed by some of the big dogs cause im still using my ASrock Dualsata2 and intend on keeping it for my upgrade to dualcore and hang on to it for atleast another year. After that, looks like i'll keep my DDR memory and head on over to the Core duo camp. ASrock really knows how to squeeze the life outta all your components especially since most of these "upgrades" like DDR-DDR2 and AGP-PCI-E do NOT provide ANY performance improvements. just marketing BS so these companies can sell hardware.:(Calin - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
Moving from DDR to DDR2 allows you to buy cheaper components (a bit cheaper). As for AGP and PCI-E, top of the line cards are PCI-E, on AGP you can find only mainstream (maybe because PCI-E x16 gives more juice to the card than AGP can?)poohbear - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
erm, moving to ddr2 isnt cheaper if i hafta ditch my 1gb of ddr ram.;) as for the PCI-E, im taking about bandwidth wise, PCI-E hasnt offered any performance increases at all. Sure, what's available now is only high end PCI-E, but if they did make a high end 7900GTX in AGP im sure it wouldnt perform 1 fps less than the PCI-E version. AGP8x was simply never saturated enough.saiku - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
Yes!! I would love to know if I can bring over my AGP 6800GT and my 2 GB of Ram from my Socket 754 world to the Core 2 Duo platform. Great article !!Anandtech, just when I thought that you had stopped caring about the "common man", here comes this great article !
Thank you for remembering those of us who don't spend 500 bucks on 2 GB of RAM !!
Rike - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
Second that. Thanks, for looking out for those of us who still have some tight budgets.VooDooAddict - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
What I find interesting is that even DDR-333 works very well on the platform.This makes it tempting to upgrade my existing Dual Xeon 2.66 to Core 2 Duo. It's got 2 gigs of low latency (2-2-2-5) DDR-333.
VooDooAddict - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
Also looking forward to the PCIe / AGP comparison.KingofL337 - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
Does this board allow for any overclocking at all?Gary Key - Tuesday, August 8, 2006 - link
Yes, figure about 10~15% on average. There is not a VCore adjustment on the board and it is limited already due to design.