Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-12, 09:20:

And no devices are detected.

My bad.
It's not "R" that's needed, it's "R plus". VIA is really making me nervous with these chips naming.

It seems to me that now this SATA-1 in the chipset is not needed at all.
VT8237 supports ATA133, on which any SSD via an ATA-SSD adapter will work no slower then SATA-150, and without any problems.

You should be using identical memory sticks otherwise you can run into SPD being read from wrong stick. It cannot set different timings for different sticks so it has to choose one.

I'm not surprised that 4 memory sticks don't want to work. It probably isn't stable at DDR400 and resets to DDR333 automatically. Just use 2 sticks, similar problem to what I encountered with AM2 except it was stable with 4 sticks at DDR2 800 there. Maybe DDR needs slightly more voltage at 400 speed.

Use different SATA cable and/or cap the drive at SATA-1.

See https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_gam … t-in_benchmarks

Some of these games have also dedicated downloadable benchmarks that are free and much smaller. Also you can test on games you wouldn't normally play on s939 such as Crisis.

shevalier wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:19:

My bad. It's not "R" that's needed, it's "R plus". VIA is really making me nervous with these chips naming. […]
Show full quote

My bad.
It's not "R" that's needed, it's "R plus". VIA is really making me nervous with these chips naming.

It seems to me that now this SATA-1 in the chipset is not needed at all.
VT8237 supports ATA133, on which any SSD via an ATA-SSD adapter will work no slower then SATA-150, and without any problems.

Yeah, ide-sata works fine and that's what i am using. But that's extra adapter i need to buy, it is a shame i can not just use sata ports which are there.

Speeds... at least on nforce2 my experience was that sata1 is ~20-30% faster than ATA133 for sequential operations. Absolutely not critical, but still faster.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:46:

You should be using identical memory sticks otherwise you can run into SPD being read from wrong stick. It cannot set different timings for different sticks so it has to choose one.

Yeah, i should. However if i am setting everything manually it should not matter as long as all sticks work at configured settings. The issue with this board i am complaining about is that it ignores my manual settings and does... something. If it is not stable i want it to fail or have memory errors, not try to be "smart". That's how things usually work, even on modern hardware.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:46:

I'm not surprised that 4 memory sticks don't want to work. It probably isn't stable at DDR400 and resets to DDR333 automatically. Just use 2 sticks, similar problem to what I encountered with AM2 except it was stable with 4 sticks at DDR2 800 there. Maybe DDR needs slightly more voltage at 400 speed.

The same CPU on different board works with 4 sticks though, so this are either issues with board layout or BIOS being difficult. I'll just use 2 sticks obviously, still annoying...

Voltage... 2.6-2.7 does not help, do not want to go further given how... uncommon this CPUs are. This 4800+ is a lot more pricey than even 6400+ windsor...

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:46:

Use different SATA cable and/or cap the drive at SATA-1.

Its a known VIA chipset bug, cable is fine, needs sata1 drive to work. But i want ssd, so have to just use ide-sata adapter...

AlexZ wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:46:

See https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_gam … t-in_benchmarks

Some of these games have also dedicated downloadable benchmarks that are free and much smaller. Also you can test on games you wouldn't normally play on s939 such as Crisis.

Thanks, i'll look into this.

Crysis... should probably work on this hardware with something like HD3850, but older cards will show single digit FPS, not sure how useful that is...

Sometimes booting into Windows with 4 sticks may be possible, but memtest still reveals lot of memory errors. They just happen to be at addresses not used initially. This is how I got initially optimistic about Phenom II and DDR2 1066 with 4 sticks but it turned out not to be stable.

Radeon HD 2600 XT is from 2007, so it may be able to play Crisis, perhaps not with max settings. Athlon 64 X2 4800+ should be able to score about 30 fps in dx9 crisis benchmark with a capable GPU. The actual game then runs better as long as nothing is happening. It would be interesting to see what a good AGP card can do in Crysis, including 7600 GT.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-08-12, 11:42:

shevalier wrote on 2025-08-12, 10:19:

My bad. It's not "R" that's needed, it's "R plus". VIA is really making me nervous with these chips naming. […]
Show full quote

My bad.
It's not "R" that's needed, it's "R plus". VIA is really making me nervous with these chips naming.

It seems to me that now this SATA-1 in the chipset is not needed at all.
VT8237 supports ATA133, on which any SSD via an ATA-SSD adapter will work no slower then SATA-150, and without any problems.

Yeah, ide-sata works fine and that's what i am using. But that's extra adapter i need to buy, it is a shame i can not just use sata ports which are there.

Speeds... at least on nforce2 my experience was that sata1 is ~20-30% faster than ATA133 for sequential operations. Absolutely not critical, but still faster.

For older SendForce controllers, there is a utility that switches SSDs to SATA-1/2/3 modes.
It definitely works with Intel 330 series SATA-3. nForce Crash51 Socket754 (Ga-k8n51gmf) began to detect it as SATA-2 instead of SATA-1.
The ancient Kingston 60Gb will arrive in a few days, I will compare it at VIA VT8237 (JetWay K8T8AS).