Best way for C2D, AGP? ASUS P5VDC-MX or ASRock 775Dual-VSTA?

[zjohnr]

I am an idiot!

Fortunately for me, asimons999 pointed out my stupidity. In my original post (below) I refer to the wrong Asus dual interface board. The P5VDC-X motherboard is dual interface AGP & PCI Express, but it does NOT support Core 2 Duo.

The Asus dual video interface board which supports C2D is revision 2.0G of the P5VDC-MX using VIA P4M800 PRO.

Bottom line: P5VDC-X no C2D support. P5VDC-MX revision 2.0G does support C2D.
(What a difference one little letter can make. )

I'm looking at/for motherboards which can (1) support Core 2 Duo (probably an E6300) and (2) have an AGP slot so I can continue to postpone buying a new video card.

The ones I've seen so far are all based on a VIA PT880 chipset. One of these is the ASUS P5VDC-X using the VIA PT880 ULTRA chipset. Another strong possibility is the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA using the VIA PT880 PRO chipset.

(AnandTech recently made the glowing comment about the ASRock MB that "Hey, for ~$55 it really doesn't suck". )

I see two ways to look at the after purchase support I might get for these boards.

OTOH, ASUS is name brand with a reputation for building solid and stable boards. This line of thinking says the ASUS board would be better quality and thus be the better way to go.

OTOH, at this point in time ASUS has probably lost all interest in the P5VDC-X board. ASUS is probably focusing all of its attention on its P965 chipset boards which seem (to me) to be incredibly popular. My guess is that the chances of any future BIOS updates for the P5VDC-X are probably slim to none. ASUS probably just doesn't care enough any longer to bother with it.

ASRock on the other hand is a much smaller outfit and probably still cares a lot about making their board work since it's probably a significant part of the niche market they are trying to fit into. So maybe the ASRock board is a better gamble?

Anyone else out there care to speculate on which way to jump?

-john, the ambivalent dinosaur

P.S. In case anyone is curious, the AGP card I'm struggling to hold onto is an FX 5200.

 

[thetanman]

I've got the ASRock and have been really happy with it so far. It also takes my old DDR as well as my AGP (GeForce 6800GS), which is a plus. I ordered the mobo, an E6600, a new case/powersupply (Antec NSK4400), and have been using my old HD and 2x512mb of DDR 266!
I haven't tried, but I hear you can only overclock 10-12%. But you'll have a C2D and $200 in your pocket.
Also, they have great bios support, and a place on the board to add an HDMI adapter. In case you ever need that.

For the money & C2D, highly recommended.

 

[microgiant]

ASROCK is owned by Asustek if you didnt already know.

 

[kamel5547]

ASROCK is owned by Asustek if you didnt already know.

No it isn't.... "ASRock is a completely independent spinoff from ASUS"

Its been a bit since it was part of Asus.

 

[zjohnr]

I ordered the mobo, an E6600, ... and 2x512mb of DDR 266!

DDR 266 and an E6600!?!? Wow. I've read that the Core 2 Duo performance was not hit hard by using lower speed memory, but I never thought anyone would take it that low. Still, with the 4MB cache in the E6600, I guess you might have extra "insulation" against slower RAM.

Out of curiousity, what are your longer term RAM and/or MB upgrade plans, if any?

I haven't tried, but I hear you can only overclock 10-12%.

From what I've read, the ASRock MB's BIOS does not allow any voltages to be changed. That's supposedly the biggest hindrance to any but the mildest form of overclocking. (Not a big concern to me at this time, of course).

a place on the board to add an HDMI adapter

You forget that I'm a dinosaur. I'm afraid I don't even know how to spell HDMI let alone actually try to use it for something.

-john, the ambivalent dino

 

[asimons999]

a word of warning.. i dont think that mobo supports core 2 duo (the asus one)..

asus do have a core 2 duo board thats dual interface.. but they dont claim core 2 duo support on the asus site for that board you originally posted about. and the other dual interface board that asus make ( P5VDC-MX ) does have a claim it supports core 2 duo..

correct me if im wrong.. but dont buy that board if your going to put a core 2 duo in it..

 

[vic20]

ASROCK boards are a junk brand made by ECS. (which is pretty bad, as their boards are bottom of the barrel for a "brand name" company)

VIA PT880 chipsets do not OC worth a damn. I had to put a fan on the northbridge on the ASROCK PT880 board I used to use (big mistake) just to get it stable at stock speeds.

These boards don't have voltage adjustments for the CPU, and its probably because it wouldn't help. The chipset can't take the high bus speeds. VIA is not an enthusiast company.

I've used the ASUS board as well and it sucks too.

I you REALLY want to stick to your AGP card, find an nForce AGP board and throw a 939 X2 in it for now


edit: Why not buy a decent 965G board and the E6300 and use onboard video for now? 5200 isn't any faster than onboard.....

 

[microgiant]

ASROCK is owned by Asustek if you didnt already know.

No it isn't.... "ASRock is a completely independent spinoff from ASUS"

Its been a bit since it was part of Asus.

If thats true I guess Im not the only one who hasnt got the message then yet.

http://neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=34985

Posted by Daniel Fleshbourne on 08 September 2006 - 10:40 · 1 comment, 723 views & 19 trackbacks

ASRock, an Asustek Computer subsidiary focusing on entry-level motherboards, will significantly increase the adoption of integrated graphics processor (IGP) chipsets from VIA Technologies for Intel-based motherboards while lowering the proportion of motherboards with ATI chipsets, indicated sources who have seen the company's latest roadmap.

Etc etc

 

[zjohnr]

ASROCK boards are a junk brand made by ECS. (which is pretty bad, as their boards are bottom of the barrel for a "brand name" company)

ASRock, an Asustek Computer subsidiary focusing on entry-level motherboards ...

:? I don't think the two assertions above can both be correct, can they? Or is it a known fact that ECS does the manufacturing for ASRock which is apparently a subsidiary of Asus? (And who does the manufacturing for Asus?) :?

-john

 

[zjohnr]

a word of warning.. i dont think that mobo supports core 2 duo (the asus one)..

asus do have a core 2 duo board thats dual interface.. but they dont claim core 2 duo support on the asus site for that board you originally posted about. and the other dual interface board that asus make ( P5VDC-MX ) does have a claim it supports core 2 duo..

Arrrrrrrgh! You are exactly right! I used the wrong Asus mobo model number in my original post. What an idiot I am.

Thank you for pointing out that the Asus dual video interface board is the P5VDC-MX revision 2G using VIA P4M800 PRO.

Well that sort of makes my original question moot since the P5VDC-MX only has 2 PCI slots. I just don't think that is enough for me! Looks like it is either the ASRocky road or go with another MB and some form of new video support.

Thanks again for spotting my mistake. My apologies to everyone else for my misinformation.

-john

 

[asimons999]

hehe, thats ok.. mistakes happen

 

[vic20]

ASUS started the brand, but I'm guessing they sold them off to ECS or they are spun off on their own and get ECS to fab their designs.

ASROCK boards used to have ASUS's silkscreen pattern on them. Even the model number used written in ASUS's font.

Now, ASROCK boards have the exact same silkscreen design and fonts as ECS (PC Chips/PC Partner/Amptron/Houston Tech/MTECH/etc/etc/etc)

Gee, I wonder why these companies (ECS subsidiaries) come and go and change their names so often.......

 

[xeenrecoil]

P.S. In case anyone is curious, the AGP card I'm struggling to hold onto is an FX 5200.

LOL dont do yourself any favors big guy, trust me when i tell you that it would be a horrible idea to hold on to that "thing" its not just old its terrible on top of it, possibly one of the worst GPU's ever made by nvidia, lets get real here even a Ti4200 is faster, you need to go to PCIe well because quite frankly you are trying to reuse a dead technology, AGP is dead dead dead. the 7800GS is the end of your upgrade path for AGP and isnt worth the expense.

Midrange PCIe cards are cheap you can pick up a 7600GT or GS for a reasonable price, and they will stomp a mudhole in your FX5200. If you question my advice just ask around i think you will find im not BSing you.

The rest is up to you but i think the fellas will steer you in the right direction.

 

[chrone]

i'll go with asrock 775dual-vsta as long as you can get the replacement warranty from your local store if anything happens in the future.

the asus board lacks the pcie vga slot, you'll need for further upgrade. if the asus board has the same as in the asrock board, i 100% suggest to go with asus board.

i've been using asrock 775dual-vsta for almost 2 months now and so far so good.

so let me know what you decide. good luck!

 

[zjohnr]

Midrange PCIe cards are cheap you can pick up a 7600GT or GS for a reasonable price, and they will stomp a mudhole in your FX5200.

I think I can see ... from the neck up, at least ... where you're coming from.

But "cheap" is in the eye of the beholder. To someone like me, who's still using a Pentium 3 system because, until recently, I haven't wanted to spend the bucks to upgrade, the price of a 7600GT does not seem cheap.

For the things I use or want to use it for my system is not limited by graphics. The CPU and memory size/bandwidth limits are my real concern.

Maybe I should look at getting a a really cheap PCI video card ...
( Oooops! Just did a quick search for PCI video on newegg.com. Looks like PCI video is a chance to simultaneously spend as much as you would on a cheap PCI Express card while getting even less performance. So, in a word, really bad idea. )

-john

 

[zjohnr]

i'll go with asrock 775dual-vsta as long as you can get the replacement warranty from your local store if anything happens in the future.

Yeah, it comes down to quality concerns, doesn't it. A $60 mobo can work perfectly well for those of us who accept it's limitations as a reasonable tradeoff for price. But if I get a DOA mobo or one that dies within months of purchase, I know I'll wish I had spent the extra money.

I'd have to say right now I'm leaning towards other boards. Possibly the GIGABYTE GA-965G-DS3 w/onboard X3000 IGP video. At ~$150 it costs around 2 1/2 times as much as the Rocky 8O, but I believe it is more OC friendly and it has on-board video (which I assume is no worse than my FX5200).

i've been using asrock 775dual-vsta for almost 2 months now and so far so good.

Out of curiousity, do you do any (mild) overclocking with your ASRock? Are you using DDR2 or were you able to recycle DDR from a previous system?

One of the reasons I'm strongly considering other mobos is because I've convinced myself it's probably worth the extra bucks to be able to OC the C2D at least from 266MHz/DDR533 to 333MHz/DDR667 speeds. (Basically I'd only expect to try to OC as far as I could get using the stock Intel cooler).

My impression from the few 775DUAL-VSTA reviews I looked at was that its BIOS screens are, well, less special. BIOS entries with titles like "IDE Drive Strength" which takes values of Low, Normal, and High leave a bad taste in my mouth. (Yes, I am a cheapskate. But even I start to draw the line at building an interface from tinker-toys. :roll: )

-john the eternally choice-challenged dinosaur

 

[djgandy]

ASROCK boards are a junk brand made by ECS. (which is pretty bad, as their boards are bottom of the barrel for a "brand name" company)

VIA PT880 chipsets do not OC worth a damn. I had to put a fan on the northbridge on the ASROCK PT880 board I used to use (big mistake) just to get it stable at stock speeds.

These boards don't have voltage adjustments for the CPU, and its probably because it wouldn't help. The chipset can't take the high bus speeds. VIA is not an enthusiast company.

I've used the ASUS board as well and it sucks too.

I you REALLY want to stick to your AGP card, find an nForce AGP board and throw a 939 X2 in it for now


edit: Why not buy a decent 965G board and the E6300 and use onboard video for now? 5200 isn't any faster than onboard.....

Don't get a 939 board. Whats the point in shelling out that money on obsolete hardware. Great you can oc it, but if you just buy the e6300, it'll cost you less and run faster anyway...

Your post makes no sence anyway. The guy has a 5200. I really don't think he cares about enthusiast components. Most enthusaist stuff is way over rated anyway. You pay 6 times the price for 10% more performance.

To the OP: What do you use your system for, if it's games (not sure what games with a fx5200) the cpu is not going to limit you. You have a pIII anyway, the core2 will seem so much faster. Save your money and go for the cheap option else you're going to get raped on ddr2 memory and pci-e graphics cards which you don't seem to want. Most stuff on the market today isnt needed unless you play oblivion anyway.
The fx5200 is an awful card, entry level cards always are, you could always try and pickup a good card on ebay for a few bucks, a 6800 or something would be a great improvement.

But yeah, if you dont get the dual vsta, expect to spend a lot of money

edit:

btw, i can only get my fsb on my asrock to 300mhz. That's using ddr400 memory. It's not high, but it saved me £400

 

[zjohnr]

What do you use your system for, if it's games (not sure what games with a fx5200) the cpu is not going to limit you.

Games?? Well, lets see, I think I have a copy of MS Flight Simulator 2000 laying around someplace ... No, not really a gamer.

The things I do which call for an upgrade are basic audio encoding/cleanup and WinRAR compressions. (WINRAR may not sound like much, but trust me, a "Fastest" compression on your basic 8GB ISO image on a Pentium 3 takes longer than you might expect).

Something I don't have the horsepower to do now but am interested in exploring is simple video editing/transcoding.

Like I said, I'm CPU and memory bandwidth bound, not video challenged. And the C2D seems to be such a compellingly large jump beyond what came before it that I think it's finally time to move on up again. True, my current motherboard is only 5 years old or so ... I guess you can call me Mr. Impulsive.

-john (For a dinosaur, 5 years is acting on impulse ).

 

[Milbo183]

Hi.I´ve built a pc a few months ago with the asrock mb,and so far it has been running great with no problems.I have tried several asrock boards over the years,and except for an single one that broke down it´s been good enough for me.i don´t do any overclocking,and wouldn´t suggest them for enthusiast use,but at stock it does it´s job.
But since you are going for a core 2,do a proper upgrade,but with any crappy pci-e card you can find cheap.can´t get worse than the fx 5200

 

[zjohnr]

btw, i can only get my fsb on my asrock to 300mhz. That's using ddr400 memory. It's not high, but it saved me £400

Hmmmmm, well, running DDR400 memory at DDR600 speeds is nothing to sneer at, I think.

OTOH, my legacy memory is a whopping 512MB of SDRAM. If I go the C2D route, I expect to be buying DDR2 RAM no matter which mobo I get. In other words, the only bene the ASRock mobo has for me is to let me carry on my possibly inappropriate relationship with my FX5200.

The low price of the ASRock tempts me, but it's just not enough, I think. After pondering this I find myself coming down on the side of spending the extra bucks and going with the newer tech.

So, as a female friend of a friend sometimes says in a completely different context, you can stop now. I'm done. I'll let my FX 5200 fade away into history.

Thanks to all who bothered to post. I really do appreciate the feedback. It makes me think things through more carefully and helps me close in on what side of a tradeoff matters to me more.

I don't think I'll actually pull the trigger on a purchase sooner than early November. For anyone interested in watching the dinosaur continue to thrash about or in seeing which way I ultimately jump, I'll post that in my other thread: Want to help upgrade an ambivalent dinosaur?

Thanks again,

-john

 

[djgandy]

ahhhhh sdram. You can't save that

Yes get another mobo. There is no point buying the asrock to save your AGP card. You can pickup very cheap PCI-E ones anyway.

If you have a large amount of ram and a decent agp card, its worth the buy. If you don't then it's not really the board for you.

 

[chrone]

well if you're not sure with asrock, then don't do it. coz for whatever it brings you either good or bad you're still don't have the faith of it and will decide the motherboard is not good enough even for the price itself.

yeah go with gigabyte ds3 and cheap pcie vga card, or go with foxconn 975x7ab series if you have the money. both brand will assure you to have good motherboard. hehe

i'm not into overclocking with this asrock motherboard since it can only overclocked stable up to 297mhz cpu fsb.

so, goodluck!

 

[chrone]

Out of curiousity, do you do any (mild) overclocking with your ASRock? Are you using DDR2 or were you able to recycle DDR from a previous system?

i'm still using ddr400. i have tried ddr2 533 once. both ran fine but not simultaneously.

i also have tried to run geforce mmx-440 64mb agp, radeon 9200se agp, geforce 6600 pcie, radeon x1900xt pcie, & ati "somewhat" pci vga card, and they're both ran fine. i'm stick with the x1900xt though, since the rest of cards were just borrowed from the office i work at.

 

[chrone]

What do you use your system for, if it's games (not sure what games with a fx5200) the cpu is not going to limit you.

Games?? Well, lets see, I think I have a copy of MS Flight Simulator 2000 laying around someplace ... No, not really a gamer.

The things I do which call for an upgrade are basic audio encoding/cleanup and WinRAR compressions. (WINRAR may not sound like much, but trust me, a "Fastest" compression on your basic 8GB ISO image on a Pentium 3 takes longer than you might expect).

Something I don't have the horsepower to do now but am interested in exploring is simple video editing/transcoding.

Like I said, I'm CPU and memory bandwidth bound, not video challenged. And the C2D seems to be such a compellingly large jump beyond what came before it that I think it's finally time to move on up again. True, my current motherboard is only 5 years old or so ... I guess you can call me Mr. Impulsive.

-john (For a dinosaur, 5 years is acting on impulse ).

according to your needs, an intel core 2 duo e6300 & asrock 775dual-vsta will suite your needs.

i still have some benchmark when i was using e6300, asrock 775dual-vsta, 2gb ddr300.

here's the e6300 & asrock & ddr400 benchmark:
7-zip benchmark: 1795 (single threaded) & 2496 (multi threaded)
winrar benchmark: 482 (single threaded) & 764 (multi threaded)
nero recode: recoding 3.5gb dvd to 700mb mp4 for less than 30 minutes in average.
pcmark05 cpu: 4783
pcmark05 memory: 3889
3dmark03 cpu: 1005 (is this normal? why the score so little which i don't know)
3dmark05 cpu: 4781
3dmark06 cpu: 1619
cinebench 9.5 rendering (single CPU): 310 CB-CPU
cinebench 9.5 rendering (multiple CPU): 578 CB-CPU
cinebench 9.5 multiprocessor speedup: 1.86

the archive manager will scores even higher if you use high performance and frequency ram since mine is only running at 200mhz (ddr 400).

hope this will help you out. considering the price you have to pay for other option. hehe

or for more powerhorse cpu, you can go with e6600.

here's the e6600 & asrock & ddr400 benchmark:
7-zip benchmark: 2363 (single threaded) & 3162 (multi threaded)
winrar benchmark: 552 (single threaded) & 916 (multi threaded)
nero recode: recoding 3.5gb dvd to 700mb mp4 for less than 20 minutes in average.
pcmark05 cpu: 6133
pcmark05 memory: 4651
3dmark03 cpu: 1350 (is this normal? why the score so little which i don't know)
3dmark05 cpu: 7017
3dmark06 cpu: 2093
cinebench 9.5 rendering (single CPU): 399 CB-CPU
cinebench 9.5 rendering (multiple CPU): 742 CB-CPU
cinebench 9.5 multiprocessor speedup: 1.86
super pi 2m: 54 seconds

 

[kafb]

I am an idiot!

Fortunately for me, asimons999 pointed out my stupidity. In my original post (below) I refer to the wrong Asus dual interface board. The P5VDC-X motherboard is dual interface AGP & PCI Express, but it does NOT support Core 2 Duo.

The Asus dual video interface board which supports C2D is revision 2.0G of the P5VDC-MX using VIA P4M800 PRO.

Bottom line: P5VDC-X no C2D support. P5VDC-MX revision 2.0G does support C2D.
(What a difference one little letter can make. )

I'm looking at/for motherboards which can (1) support Core 2 Duo (probably an E6300) and (2) have an AGP slot so I can continue to postpone buying a new video card.

The ones I've seen so far are all based on a VIA PT880 chipset. One of these is the ASUS P5VDC-X using the VIA PT880 ULTRA chipset. Another strong possibility is the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA using the VIA PT880 PRO chipset.

(AnandTech recently made the glowing comment about the ASRock MB that "Hey, for ~$55 it really doesn't suck". )

I see two ways to look at the after purchase support I might get for these boards.

OTOH, ASUS is name brand with a reputation for building solid and stable boards. This line of thinking says the ASUS board would be better quality and thus be the better way to go.

OTOH, at this point in time ASUS has probably lost all interest in the P5VDC-X board. ASUS is probably focusing all of its attention on its P965 chipset boards which seem (to me) to be incredibly popular. My guess is that the chances of any future BIOS updates for the P5VDC-X are probably slim to none. ASUS probably just doesn't care enough any longer to bother with it.

ASRock on the other hand is a much smaller outfit and probably still cares a lot about making their board work since it's probably a significant part of the niche market they are trying to fit into. So maybe the ASRock board is a better gamble?

Anyone else out there care to speculate on which way to jump?

-john, the ambivalent dinosaur

P.S. In case anyone is curious, the AGP card I'm struggling to hold onto is an FX 5200.

Hello,
I buy a Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 with MB ASrock 775Conroe e-Fire eSATAII (Intel 945 and ICH7R) and I'm very pleased about him. It's run very well and I see in W XP prof setting 2 processor. Realy, the MB have not much options for OC, but it's very stable in aplications. And it's very cheep.