ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Motherboard

[Michael]

Hitting our labs today were two more ASRock motherboards to put under our Linux microscope. The first motherboard was the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA. This motherboard is based on the VIA PT880 Pro/Ultra and VT8237A. It supports Intel LGA-775 processors up to and including the upcoming Conroe. Meanwhile, since it is part of the ASRock "Dual" series, it continues to boast support for both PCI Express and AGP graphics, as well as DDR1 and DDR2. For those that care about this feature, it is indeed Microsoft Windows Vista ready. Phoronix will have Linux compatibility notes and benchmarks in our usual motherboard review style in the upcoming weeks. Below are a few quick shots of this new ASRock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard.

[jack]

Hi..&nbsp; Congratulations, great site.<br><br>&nbsp; IMHO These Asrock "dual" mainboards can be a very good&nbsp; bussines workstation upgrade, because we can re-use our DDR and or CPU.<br><br>In this sense, I think that it will be interesting if&nbsp; a DDR vs DDR2&nbsp; with a single core (Pentium and Athlon) and&nbsp; with a dual cpu&nbsp; (P d,&nbsp; X2 and Conroe) shootout can be made (I know 10 reviews are a lot..) <br><br>Personally, I am considering upgrading my sysytem with a "775twins-HDTV v2", pending only the results of my research on the XGL-ATI xpress200 compatibility and configuration.<br>So being selfish, I will ask you, if you have any spare time, if you can make a&nbsp; Conroe&nbsp; DDR vs DDR2 performance review.<br><br>Thanks<br>

[Michael]

Originally Posted by jack

Hi..&nbsp; Congratulations, great site.<br><br>&nbsp; IMHO These Asrock "dual" mainboards can be a very good&nbsp; bussines workstation upgrade, because we can re-use our DDR and or CPU.<br><br>In this sense, I think that it will be interesting if&nbsp; a DDR vs DDR2&nbsp; with a single core (Pentium and Athlon) and&nbsp; with a dual cpu&nbsp; (P d,&nbsp; X2 and Conroe) shootout can be made (I know 10 reviews are a lot..) <br><br>Personally, I am considering upgrading my sysytem with a "775twins-HDTV v2", pending only the results of my research on the XGL-ATI xpress200 compatibility and configuration.<br>So being selfish, I will ask you, if you have any spare time, if you can make a&nbsp; Conroe&nbsp; DDR vs DDR2 performance review.<br><br>Thanks<br>

Thanks for joining the forums.

I'll see what I can do about publishing some DDR and DDR2 performance numbers for Conroe. At the very least, I'll try to get some time to run those tests and at least pass them along on the forums if I am not able to get a full review done in time.

[jack]

Originally Posted by Michael

Thanks for joining the forums.

I'll see what I can do about publishing some DDR and DDR2 performance numbers for Conroe. At the very least, I'll try to get some time to run those tests and at least pass them along on the forums if I am not able to get a full review done in time.

Thanks.. I will look forward to read your comments.

Aug-09. I just saw a DDR vs DDR2 performance review using the Dual-Vista and Wos.
The difference between good DDR-400 and DDR2-533 is minimal. I guess that Linux will achieve similar results.

Regarding the 775Twins, looks like the Radeon IGP is not supported at this time under XGL-Compiz.

[guotatofu]

I just bought the same board together with a Conroe E6400.

I have tried to install Fedora Core 4/5 on the second SATA hard drive, but haven't had any success. The installation could not find any hard drive, even after I selected the sata_via module when prompted to "add devices".

So I am very eager to know whether you or other members could have run into the same problem and how to solve it.

Thanks!

[Sierra_Papa]

Same problem here. I was unable to run livecd's like PCLinuxOS MiniMe 0.92 and 0.93. All ends with "no ide channel" error.
I have installed Vector 5.1 standard edition (kernel 2.6.12) but there were no DMA support I was unable to make it work with hdparm and reconfigured kernel.
i found this I think it's a right diagnosis of a problem, but I wasn't able to patch any kernel including the latest 2.6.18. rc4 (mismatch in line 4).


Btw updating BIOS to 1.70 does not help.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by guotatofu

I just bought the same board together with a Conroe E6400.

I have tried to install Fedora Core 4/5 on the second SATA hard drive, but haven't had any success. The installation could not find any hard drive, even after I selected the sata_via module when prompted to "add devices".

So I am very eager to know whether you or other members could have run into the same problem and how to solve it.

Thanks!

Same problem here which is why you haven't seen the reviews yet. It should run with the Fedora Core 6 test releases. No work-around found yet for FC5.

[CapnCaffeine]

Originally Posted by Michael

Same problem here which is why you haven't seen the reviews yet. It should run with the Fedora Core 6 test releases. No work-around found yet for FC5.

Just an FYI on running Ubuntu on this motherboard and enabling DMA ont he IDE channels and 3d acceleration by hacking the AGPGART

http://home.rochester.rr.com/msarnov...untuHowTo.html

The files that replace the ones in the stock Ubuntu file are linked there as well and will probably work on other distros as well.

Have Fun!

CapnCaffeine

[guotatofu]

Originally Posted by CapnCaffeine

Just an FYI on running Ubuntu on this motherboard and enabling DMA ont he IDE channels and 3d acceleration by hacking the AGPGART

http://home.rochester.rr.com/msarnov...untuHowTo.html

The files that replace the ones in the stock Ubuntu file are linked there as well and will probably work on other distros as well.

Have Fun!

CapnCaffeine

Thanks for the tips. I finally managed to intall FC5 during the weekends. Here is what I did:

1. Plug an old IDE hard drive to the primary IDE port, which becomes hda.

2. Install FC5 on hda. Since DMA is not available during the installation, you really need some patience.

3. Boot FC5 from Windows XP using VMWare server which is free. I could have booted it directly, but the speed would be unbearable.

4. Download the kernel source RPM, modify the header file and the two driver files for DMA and SATA support. Compile the source and make install. The head file "pci_ids.h" is modified following the Ubuntu post, and the two driver files "via82cxxx.c" and "sata_via.c " are modified according to
http://forums.viaarena.com/messagevi...enterthread=y"

5. Now FC5 can be booted with DMA and SATA support. :-)

[linportal]

Here is yet another review of Linux on 775Dual-VSTA. The upcoming 2.6.18 kernel will have proper support for at least ATA drives, probably SATA too.