Dear gurus,

I'm considering finally upgrading my current setup (P4 Northwood 2.8@3.4, 4*256 DDR400 Kingston HyperX, X850pro). I read about Asrock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard, and that seemed to solve all my problems! Now jump to Conroe, and wait half a year to get Vista, DX10 card, DDR2 memory when it is cheaper, and of course a new mobo (yes, PSU and other bells and whistles yes). But... I realised I have 4*DDR400, and that just does not fit to that Asrock...

Are there any other mobos with backward compatibility that would fit 4 DDRs? Overclockability is not an issue in this phase, I think 6600 would be an improvement with stock speed already.

Basically getting 2*1gig DDR2 to the Asrock would not be a huge problem, but I've understood new mobos are somewhat picky with the memory brands, and if I happen to now screw up with that, the choice of getting "the best" motherboard in the future may be ruled out? Or what's your thought?

Thanks for sharing any ideas!

Forgive me for this but, why are you upgrading just your processor and motherboard now and everything else in six or so months?Why not wait and save yourmoney and get everything you need at once, so you can make sure you get compatable parts?

Sorry, retract that statement... Apparently I can not read... I missed a few sentences in your post.

OK, If I read that right you want to upgrade your mobo now so you can get the Conroe and then upgrade your mobo again in six to seven months?

Please clarify your intentions....

Yeah I thought that the "why" might be the big question. Long story cut in short, I get basically everything that I buy during this year almost half the price (work + tax stuff). Since I'm also travelling most of the time this year, I'm not so much into gaming right now (I need to do other stuff while using my computer), but dual core might be useful, and would help to my gadget feaver.

But you're doubts are right, it might be more reasonable to just buy everything next year. It is just a long wait gadget-feaver-wise. Unless there is something that allows me to just upgrade the CPU now... :?

Dude just bite the bullet and spend an extra 100 bucks or so for a gig of reasonably fast DDR2 at the same time, especially if you can get it for half price now. Thats like $50 bucks. What are you worried about? The asrock mobo is only like $55 so you'll save the money back right there... apart from anything else your 4*256 of DDR is probably slow enough to bring a core 2 down noticeably anyway even if you did get it all plugged in somewhere.

I'm partway through a rebuild but stuck with an AGP GPU until a good (i.e. not C19) nvidia sli mobo and DX10 cards come out so I'm running an asrock 775 vsta right now. It works great and stable with my core 2 extreme and raid-0'd raptors.

Just read the original post again... I did have a problem with some PQI turbo ddr2 memory on the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA .. it wouldn't come up at all with that memory in, although another PC I have does so I knew the memory was OK, although I've since read other people have problems with that memory and different mobos too.

It turned out the problem is the default ASrock bios settings have memory voltage at 'low' whereas the PQI memory needed a 'hi' setting. Its not a problem if you can just get as far as a boot into bios with some other memory plugged in then you can reset it, but I had to RMA the memory coz I had nothing else to even get me that far. Once I got different brand memory its been rock solid ever since.

I'm in the same boat and looking for an answer as well. My mobo and cpu blew and I need to upgrade but I would REALLY like to hold on to my ATI 9800 Pro AGP and 1 GB of Kingston HyperX KHX4000 DDR. What to do??? I want to get something I can have a good upgrade path for the future while still saving some $ by keeping these components. If you have or find the answer...let me know.

if you are not gaming you should just get the G965 board from intel it comes with graphics that will run all of your apps. G965 is not picky with memory like amd boards it will run ddr2 500 667 and 800
also the G965graphics/moboard already supports vista premium/ultra or what ever they are going to call it. so you dont have to worry about upgrading later

edit
i edit almost all of my posts for inaccurate data

Why are you reccomending 965 chipset and not 975? 975 has better performance than 965 in almost every situation and costs about the same.

This mobo has the 4 x ddr slots you want + Core2D support - but no PCIe for future expansion, will it do?

http://www.asrock.com/product/ConRoe865PE.htm

That's the one for me! Thanks man! I'll throw E6600 on that and that'll keep me happy for some months until the next gen other stuff.

I agree with that, but the name says "conroe", the spec says "supporting Conroe processors", and there are some articles people actually using this combination.

Well, I get the board today, I can post some results if interested, no major overclocking results to be expected though...

it says 865
is that for C2D?
i thought C2D was only 965 and 975

There are 3 important factors to enabe support for C2D

1066FSB
VRM version 11.0
BIOS support

If you can get the above three with an older Intel chipset it will work... As Asrock show..

The Dual-VSTA turned up yesterday. No memory problems. I just wacked my generic ram in and off i went :-)

1gb in 1 slot and 512mb in the other.

the link if its not here already(from newegg)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157092

Ok, posting this with E6600 and Asrock ConRoe865PE (and AGP GPU and 4*256 DDR1), seems to work fine (sw installs ongoing). Needed to change one jumper to support 1066FSB, otherwise just "plug and play".

Good luck finding an Asrock ConRoe865PE. I think it has been ascertained that it is only available in Asia at this time. So you can order it from Austrailia, mate!