Anyone using the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA and SATA?

[13thmonkey]

What HDD are are you using? I'm getting issues that could be compatability could be HDD failure, such as 'Error Loading OS' and 'a disk read error occured' that stop me booting, but once running its absolutely fine. Have done two extended scans from Dos and its showing up fine. So I suspect compatability. And I have it jumpered down to 150Mb/s SATA 1 speeds.

I'm not gong to mention the HDD as it'll encourage the usual, yeah they're crap buy xx instead, which I'm not really interested in, I think that the drive is fine, just not with this board.

 

[mkaibear]

Er, if you suspect people are going to tell you that the drive isn't a good one, have you considered the possibility that it might be the drive?

Do some scans using the manufacturer's tools, try running a full SMART report on it, see what happens.

To be perfectly honest, the problem sounds like something wrong with the drive, rather than something wrong with the controller.

 

[13thmonkey]

Er, if you suspect people are going to tell you that the drive isn't a good one, have you considered the possibility that it might be the drive?

Do some scans using the manufacturer's tools, try running a full SMART report on it, see what happens.

To be perfectly honest, the problem sounds like something wrong with the drive, rather than something wrong with the controller.

Two full scans using a dos boot disk and manufactures (WD) software have shown nothing (1hr15mins each), checkdisk- nothing, SMART - nothing, massive qty's of data being transferred from machine to machine - nothing, PC up and running for 30+ hours with new drive - nothing, everything says the drive is good... But on a cold start it won't boot, almost like it is not a bootable partition. Ctrl+alt+del and its fine, I'm not booting so other instance of windows either, its the only disk with an OS on it.

Which made me think that the drive wasn't waking up quickly enough to be spotted properly by the Bios, but that doesn't make sense, as the drive is recognised by the Bios.

So as you can see I'm not really sure what could be the cause, hence asking for a definate working brand / model of HDD.

Edit: I might have misunderstood your first comment, Its a WD drive, but I didn't want to start off the WD vs HGST vs Segate wars. As that isn't really the point.

 

[chrone]

hello there buddy!

i used the same board as you are with western digital se 120gb sata II (jumpered to sata I) and seagate 7200.7 120gb sata I. they are all running fine with booting (installed OS on two drive for testing purpose only).

i've tried using both F6 VIA RAID driver from floppy disk (RAID on BIOS) and standard sata-ide driver from microsoft (non-RAID on BIOS). they're still running fine.

there's a new release BIOS for ASRock 775Dual-VSTA P1.90. I first used P1.0 then updated it to P1.80, downdated it to P1.50, then updated it again to P1.80, and finally to P1.90. all of the BIOS version is running fine the my two hdds.

 

[13thmonkey]

hello there buddy!

i used the same board as you are with western digital se 120gb sata II (jumpered to sata I) and seagate 7200.7 120gb sata I. they are all running fine with booting (installed OS on two drive for testing purpose only).

i've tried using both F6 VIA RAID driver from floppy disk (RAID on BIOS) and standard sata-ide driver from microsoft (non-RAID on BIOS). they're still running fine.

there's a new release BIOS for ASRock 775Dual-VSTA P1.90. I first used P1.0 then updated it to P1.80, downdated it to P1.50, then updated it again to P1.80, and finally to P1.90. all of the BIOS version is running fine the my two hdds.

Thanks, looks like a new Wd should do the trick, and there is no problem in general. Also running 1.90

Hows the system running in general?

 

[chrone]

the system is running fine except for my only issue with the agp and crt monitor cold/warm booting. i'm using lcd monitor now, so it's fine 'till now!

i noticed that the western digital is a bit slower than seagate if F6 VIA RAID driver not installed but it's ok, it's only a 12% drop in pcmark05 hdd benchmark performance. but i still like the wd hdd because it's cooler and quieter than the seagate. if the front intake fan not running, or the air conditioner not running, the seagate would reach above 45 celcius degree instead of the wd not even touching the 45 level.

 

[13thmonkey]

Glad to hear that all is close enough to being good.

My WD did do some odd things, it would quite happily get down to 33-35C whilst I was doing stuff but then when it was idle (screen saver), it would climb to 42-45C. Indexing turned off, and no V checkers doing anything. Even under conditions of copying 15Gb from other drives it would only hit 41-42.

That did concern me a little, we'll wait and see what the next one does.

 

[chrone]

now that is weird. could be the drive itself, could be the motherboard as in asrock motherboard things can go a bit hotter than other motherboard using the same chipset. hehe

i used to run p4 2.4ghz prescott fsb 533 around 38 celcius degree in asus p4v8x-x mobo, the same cpu with intel d865perl could go around 42 celcius degree, and the same cpu with asrock p4i65gv could go around 52 celcius degree.

 

[13thmonkey]

I've got the Antec P180 case, and i've mounted that WD in the lower segment, so the HD should be isolated from everything. Its just a very odd pattern of temp change. I've just written zero's all over the drive (in preparation for RMA) so its useless to windows, and the HDD is sitting at 40C, but it was at 33C when it was a functional drive.

New one will arrive next week, and we'll see what happens then.

Have you used a PCI-E card with yours yet? I'm thinking of getting a 7900GS, not sure if it'll work though. I know it will be bottlenecked, but I'm happy with that.

 

[chrone]

i'm using thermaltake armor jr. cassis.

yes, i've tried to use my friend's pci express vga card which was asus extreme silence 6600 or something like that. it runs 3dmark05 with more less 2.200 score. it worked!

but i don't know what will happen with newer graphic card. perhaps you should check it first on the asrock site about the pci express compatibility issue. the last thing i know is asrock motherboard is more compatible to nvidia than ati.

well the bottleneck won't be to significant as it shows at anandtech's reviews. especially with the more expensive motherboard and they will last for let's say, a year or less? regarding the new core and nanometer technology introduced by intel at the IDF Fall 2006.

i'm pretty satisfied and much thanks that i bought the e6300 and asrock as if i want to build a new system i still have the money to spend. next year would be as much interesting to build a new system after amd hit intel or vice versa with their new multicore processor hehehe

oh here i found asrock 775dual-vsta is compatible with NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E from this site:
http://www.asrock.com/support/VGA/show.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA

perhaps it would run great too with any 7900 chipsets. good luck with your future new hard disk!

 

[zahid]

Mate,

U did Press F6 and install the JAHCI SATA drivers during XP installation, right?

Also , u need to set in BIOS : non-RAID

Try a fresh clean install of XP ( the universal solution lol)

 

[13thmonkey]

No didn't install the drivers, but not using raid so I don't need to right??

Also was a copy of clean install from my old disk.

 

[zahid]

No didn't install the drivers, but not using raid so I don't need to right??

I personally install the SATA Drivers even though I don't use RAID. And since I didn't have a floppy drive, I used nlite to merge the JAHCI SATA Drivers on the Drivers CD with my XP installation CD's contents.

You might want to try this.

And after installing XP, I think I searched for these jahci drivers on my Hard Drive and found them in the Windows folder. So, obviously, if Windows didn't need them, it wouldn't install them.

And.., how old is your Hard Drive btw? Is it more than 3 years old?

Btw, my Hard Drive is a MAXTOR SATA300 200GB. I hate WDC Drives - the one in my DELL sounded like a jet before I threw it out of the window.

 

[zahid]

Regarding PCI-EXPRESS GFX CARD compatibility,

so far I have tried

XFX 7300LE , ASUS 7300LE, INNO3D 7300LE and ASUS X1300PRO. No probs.

Just because ASROCK doesn't have the card in it's compatibility list doesn't mean you can't use it!

It's just like RAM . Just cos it's not under the QUALIFIED VENDOR's RAM list doesn't mean it won't work. ( Of course, you gotta use the same type and speed RAM that your mobo supports. duh!)

 

[13thmonkey]

Only 1 week old, its been RMA'd now, but was concerned about compatability.

The last message that I saw from the bios relating to it was 'third ata master failed' whilst it was polling all of the drives. So I think it might have been dying.

 

[13thmonkey]

Regarding PCI-EXPRESS GFX CARD compatibility,

so far I have tried

XFX 7300LE , ASUS 7300LE, INNO3D 7300LE and ASUS X1300PRO. No probs.

Just because ASROCK doesn't have the card in it's compatibility list doesn't mean you can't use it!

It's just like RAM . Just cos it's not under the QUALIFIED VENDOR's RAM list doesn't mean it won't work. ( Of course, you gotta use the same type and speed RAM that your mobo supports. duh!)

Thats what I am expecting, also they have been unable to provide me with any cards that do not work. So I expect I'll ok with whatever I end up with.

 

[zahid]

One thing you should note that the mobo has a PCI -Express x16 slot but it operates at x4.

But, then again, the cards I used didn't say u need a PCI-Express x16 slot.
They only mentioned "PCI-Express".

 

[13thmonkey]

The PCI-E protocol allows for bandwidth negotiation, all cards should work in all slots that they can physically fit into.

 

[niz]

Anyone using the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA and SATA?
What HDD are are you using?

Dual 150Gb Raptors in raid 0.
Rock solid and never seen a problem yet.

It sounds like you are having a timing problem. You might wanna check your ram and fsb clock are set to the right speed and timing. (the sata interface is driven off the FSB I think).

I never had a problem with the HDs but I had issues with odd blue screens etc with the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA when I first got it. I had the memory timing on auto and "flexibility option" in the chipset features to disabled, which are both the default settings. As soon as I manually entered the proper ram timing and turned on the flexibility option, it became a very stable system indeed.

Also you might wanna make sure you've flashed your bios to the latest version. The board was a new product a couple months ago and when I got mine and it came with bios version 1.1 even though they were upto 1.8 on the asrock website.

 

[13thmonkey]

Thanks, using 1.90 bios, I'm more or less certain it is a bad drive, but I wanted to hear of somone else using WD Sata, so I could be sure it was not a compat issue.

It has auto detected my DDR400 correctly, and now that I have removed that drive all is perfect, which points more clearly at the drive.

Very happy with board in general, just beginning OC testing (will probably turn it down afterwards though) and have hit 300Mhz, will see where it stops.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[minim3]

I think this mobo will be my next buy along with a 6400!

 

[13thmonkey]

Note that I have hit 305Mhz FSb and not 3Ghz...

 

[chrone]

i'm still running ok with default setting

will there be a jump in performance if i upgrade to e6600 from e6300? hehe

 

[13thmonkey]

i'm still running ok with default setting

will there be a jump in performance if i upgrade to e6600 from e6300? hehe

Technically yes, practically probably not, would you have asked the question with the old Fx's at their prices, FX60>Fx62 (or whatever the codes were) at $600+ the answer would have been yes its quicker but not by enough in the real world.

The same answer still applies, just that the prices are now less...

I've put mine back onto std clocks for now until I understand what its doing to my DDR, I'm not sure if its forcing an OC on that or not....

 

[chrone]

glad to hear it coz as for current moment i'm still wanting e6600. lol. this stuff is killing me even though i already had e6300

well if you raise the fsb, you raise the ram frequency too. perhaps your ram can't take it additional pressure than standard one. i'm not into overclocking especially when the default speed is enough already, and via chipset pretty sucks at overclocking. 5% oc is the most stable one in my last experience. hehe