Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

[A-L-E-X]

Hypothetically speaking, if someone did wrote a new BIOS is there a way to allow it to be able to use a PCIe 3.0 GPU or a newer CPU? Would PCIe 3.0 even make a difference since there would be a cap on speeds since the board has a 4x bus?

[kanecvr]

Yes, it will eventually boot into Win98SE, but I had all kind of strange issues with the 775Dual VSTA and Win98. I would NOT recommend this board for Win98SE usage. You will get it up and running, but it will not be stable.

Same experience here. I get odd BSODs and system hangs. It seems to be a bit more stable when using a PCI-E card (6600GT) then with an AGP card (6800LE) but still not usable by my standards.

The only modernish mainboard I've been able to run win98se stable on is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 (socket AM2 + DDR2 + AGP / nForce 3 chipset) - but only with a IDE drive. Win98 installs fine on SATA drives but I get file system corruption soon after.

I managed to install a set of odd Abit? nforce3 drivers, and got everything but the on-board lan working in win98 with 1GB of ram and a A64 X2 5000+. I tried running newer chips like an Athlon II X4 640 but there's loads of instability, even with only one core enabled.

[Carlos S. M.]

Yes, it will eventually boot into Win98SE, but I had all kind of strange issues with the 775Dual VSTA and Win98. I would NOT recommend this board for Win98SE usage. You will get it up and running, but it will not be stable.

Same experience here. I get odd BSODs and system hangs. It seems to be a bit more stable when using a PCI-E card (6600GT) then with an AGP card (6800LE) but still not usable by my standards.

The only modernish mainboard I've been able to run win98se stable on is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 (socket AM2 + DDR2 + AGP / nForce 3 chipset) - but only with a IDE drive. Win98 installs fine on SATA drives but I get file system corruption soon after.

I managed to install a set of odd Abit? nforce3 drivers, and got everything but the on-board lan working in win98 with 1GB of ram and a A64 X2 5000+. I tried running newer chips like an Athlon II X4 640 but there's loads of instability, even with only one core enabled.

was the SATA drive larger than 128 GB? I do remember Windows 9x having corruption issues with drivers larger than the 28 bit LBA limit (128 GB)

Idk about the stability with the Athlon II x4 640, but aparentlty, acording to Gigabyte, the board doesn't support AMD K10 based CPUs officially, fatest supported CPU officially is the Athlon 64 x2 6400+, BIOS might not have the requiered AGESA version to support AMD K10 CPUs properly, i can be worng at some point, but there might be changes of begin possible to mod the BIOS with AMD K10 microcode/support

[kanecvr]

Yes, it will eventually boot into Win98SE, but I had all kind of strange issues with the 775Dual VSTA and Win98. I would NOT recommend this board for Win98SE usage. You will get it up and running, but it will not be stable.

Same experience here. I get odd BSODs and system hangs. It seems to be a bit more stable when using a PCI-E card (6600GT) then with an AGP card (6800LE) but still not usable by my standards.

The only modernish mainboard I've been able to run win98se stable on is a Gigabyte GA-MF3 (socket AM2 + DDR2 + AGP / nForce 3 chipset) - but only with a IDE drive. Win98 installs fine on SATA drives but I get file system corruption soon after.

I managed to install a set of odd Abit? nforce3 drivers, and got everything but the on-board lan working in win98 with 1GB of ram and a A64 X2 5000+. I tried running newer chips like an Athlon II X4 640 but there's loads of instability, even with only one core enabled.

was the SATA drive larger than 128 GB? I do remember Windows 9x having corruption issues with drivers larger than the 28 bit LBA limit (128 GB)

Nope. 80GB. Partitioned with win98's FDISK utility as well (otherwise I have trouble booting off the partition). 4GB partition for win98, 15gb for XP and the rest split in two.

Idk about the stability with the Athlon II x4 640, but aparentlty, acording to Gigabyte, the board doesn't support AMD K10 based CPUs officially, fatest supported CPU officially is the Athlon 64 x2 6400+, BIOS might not have the requiered AGESA version to support AMD K10 CPUs properly, i can be worng at some point, but there might be changes of begin possible to mod the BIOS with AMD K10 microcode/support

I'm using a beta bios off Gigabyte forums. It supports up to Phenom II X4 (it posts with X6 CPUs but will not boot) - and works very well in XP and win7, but it's a no-go in win98. I think it might have to do with the Nortbridge (more specifically the memory controller) built into AM2+ and AM3 CPUs since I experienced the exact same behaviour when attempting to run win98 on other boards (some AM2+ nforce board and a AMD 760 AM3 board). The AM2+ board worked OK with a 4400+ but I had issues with getting the 6600GT working correctly on said board. Seems to work fine on the nforce 3 after I installed the chipset drivers.

Right now I'm running win98 off a 40GB PATA drive, and XP/Win7 off a seperate 80GB SATA drive - to switch between the two I have to go into bios, set it to boot from the PATA drive, and limit the amount of RAM memory to 1GB. The BIOS allows me to limit the ammount of ram to 1024, 3328 or 4096MB - and it also retains memory shadowing and remapping features seen on older motherboards.

[exxocet]

Been able to reach ~ 3.5 Ghz (multiplier 13) on Quad Core QX6700 with Vcore and Vdroop mods. It is quite an achievement as Quad Core requires twice as much juice (aka current) from those poor MOSFETS. It boots sucessfully from 1.45 Vcore, but it needs 1.5 V in order to fully run Prime95.
Probably it will hit 3.6 Ghz with a touch of FSB, but it requires watercooling on long run.

[The Serpent Rider]

Probably it will hit 3.6 Ghz with a touch of FSB,

...or you'll just kill that motherboard.

[exxocet]

You can't kill a motherboard by increasing FSB. If it's too much it won't boot, that's all.
You can kill it by running too hot, that's why I mentioned watercooling. And this CPU likes to get naughty, it goes 80°Celsius with Thermalright air cooling in full load 3.5 Ghz.

[agent_x007]

You can't kill a motherboard by increasing FSB. If it's too much it won't boot, that's all.

Yeah.. it will boot and die when you try to test stability in Prime95 or other intensive CPU test.

I'm pretty sure you can melt this MBs VRM under load with QX6700 as CPU, Vcore @ 1,5V and a vDroop mod on top of all that.
So... I hope you got active cooling on those MOSFETs

Last thing : This board wasn't stable enough for me and my OC'ed 45nm Quad Core @ 1066MHz FSB (I didn't do a Vdroop mod tho).

PS. Is that Thermalright a "TRUE" with a high pressure fan (and good CFM) ?
PS2. Why I don't like QX6700 in this board :

^No voltage mods required

[exxocet]

You can't kill a motherboard by increasing FSB. If it's too much it won't boot, that's all.

Yeah.. it will boot and die when you try to test stability in Prime95 or other intensive CPU test.

I'm pretty sure you can melt this MBs VRMs at Load with QX6700 as main CPU, Vcore @ 1,5V and a vDroop mod on top of all that.

So... I hope you got active cooling on those MOSFETs

Just little aluminium sinks on the VRM. I'm not running on 1.5V daily, it was just for the test as I've finished the Vdroop mod and I was curios if it helps. It does, before Vdroop voltage used to drop -0.1V in full load, now it goes just -0.05V.
Currently I run on 3.2 GHZ (multi 12) and 1.46 Vcore, it keeps temperatures on more decent values.

[exxocet]

The cooler is an old Thermalright XP90 (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article194-page1.html), modified to fit on LGA775. The fan is an variable rpm 92mm Enermax, 2400 rpm max speed. 4 core overclocked is a little bit too much for an old socket 478 cooler.
Yep, QX6800 and QX6850 are the best choice, but still too expensive (3 times more than QX6700) and QX6850 is rara avis.

[agent_x007]

Yep, QX6800 and QX6850 are the best choice, but still too expensive (3 times more than QX6700) and QX6850 is rara avis.

Well... to be fair, best choise is QX9650/QX9770 - but those are even more rare
QX6700 is the hottest Quad Core in Intel lineup (along with Q6600 rev. B3).
From Perf/$ QX6700 is best, but QX6800/QX6850 are useful when you can't have a big cooler on top.

On that note : I recently bought Mugen II rev. B, to TR 120 Ultra Extreme I already own (both with full accesories kits), just in case I needed something on PGA 478/754 sockets

[exxocet]

Yep, QX6800 and QX6850 are the best choice, but still too expensive (3 times more than QX6700) and QX6850 is rara avis.

Well... to be fair, best choise is QX9650/QX9770 - but those are even more rare
QX6700 is the hottest Quad Core in Intel lineup (along with Q6600 rev. B3).
From Perf/$ QX6700 is best, but QX6800/QX6850 are useful when you can't have a big cooler on top.

On that note : I recently bought Mugen II rev. B, to TR 120 Ultra Extreme I already own (both with full accesories kits), just in case I needed something on PGA 478/754 sockets

Sweet. You got some nice gems there.

[agent_x007]

Sweet. You got some nice gems there.

Indeed


Mugen II on PGA 478 : LINK

[The Serpent Rider]

QX9650/QX9770 - but those are even more rare

Rare QX9650? What a lovely anekdot.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/FREE-SH ... 3512e7b355

Same thing goes for so called rare QX6850.

[agent_x007]

Rare QX9650? What a lovely anekdot.

You are right... but I meant they are as rare as QX6850 : LINK
Keep in mind, that not all people have access to eBay or aliexpress.

I bought almost all of my CPU's locally (including QX6850 and QX9770 and I live in Poland).
Had to say tho... some prices are simply Stupid for that last one on ebay.

[exxocet]

Buying old CPUs on extra price from China, on Aliexpress - this is the "anekdot"!
At least on eBay you have some PayPal guarantee of refund.

QX9650/QX9770 - but those are even more rare

Rare QX9650? What a lovely anekdot.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/FREE-SH ... 3512e7b355

Same thing goes for so called rare QX6850.

[The Serpent Rider]

Buying old CPUs on extra price

Nobody was talking about price, it's not good but affordable. More than thousand CPUs in stock on Aliexpress alone are not rare by any stretch of an imagination.

[exxocet]

Nobody was talking about price, you're right, but some of us were talking about the topic's subject - ASrock VSTA & 4Core. You're not one of them.

[The Serpent Rider]

It's related.

[exxocet]

My 4Core Dual SATA2 R2.0 actually works with Dual channel DDR2 and 8-way Interleave. It might be a thing regarding the chipset, my mobo has VIA PT880 Pro, while on http://www.controsensi.it/Mods/4CoreDua ... ts_Eng.htm the same motherboard features PT880 Ultra. Now, if there really are differences, Ultra should have been the better version, at least theoretically, but...

the bank interleave option has AUTO value on default. Now in order to summarize:
Official bios (2.20)= max 2GB:
single channel (1 module) 2GB memory = AUTO =8-WAY (detected by diagnostic utility from the operating system);

modified bios (2.20a)= max 4GB (3.25 more or less detected based on VGA and agp aperture size value):
single channel (1 module) 2GB=AUTO=4-way;
dual channel 2GBx2GB=AUTO=4-way;
dual channel 2GBx2GB=8-WAY errors occur;

How to know about the increasing performance? x8600 + ddr2 first boot allows the system to start regularly (the step from 4-way to 8-way increases of 420MB/s when MEMTEST86+ is used) After rebooting system is unable to MAP the memory rightly, so the errors occur:

post = single channel (although 2 module od 2GB of ram are installed;
BIOS shows a total ram of 11964MB) and shows the first module value installed of 2048MB, the second module installed of 512MB (although it is a module of 2048MB).

No problems occur when the bank interleave is configured on AUTO or 4-way, problems appears only on 8-way although the memories support 8-way bank interleave.