End of the World is Nigh

[LeftEyeNine]

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay.

First of all my black-case PCs charisma was utterly blown off with an error message given by a demo of a game, which was eventually revealed to be that my CPUs name was not sung anymore.

Then came a message from Husar on my MSN, where he was unsure to tell me something. When I gave him an offer he was not supposed to refuse (:smoking:), he choicelessly told that he was able to try the M2TW demo. He has bought Intel Conroe E6600 monster, and got it installed over ASrock 775Dual-VSTA (VIA PT880 Pro) (http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-VSTA.htm) mobo.

The reason that tempted me to this costing purchase (it is costing for an unemployed fresh university graduate) that it was saving me from having to buy new RAMs (DDR2) and a new PCIe video card, since this hobbit magic has support for both DDR2 and DDRs while it has both PCIe (4x, not 16x) and AGP (8x) slots.

So that I'll be able to use my 6600GT and 1 GB DDR 400 MHzs on the new board, accompanied with the new blockbuster director Conroe E6600.

Isn't this a wise choice regarding the fact that 1 GB RAM and 6600GTs are still usable today, while future upgrades are possible as well?

What's your opinion? Do you have any experiences on this ASRock mobo? I have read a review of this mobo from OCWorkBench.com starting here (http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/asrock/775Dual-VSTA/g1.htm), and ending here (http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/asrock/775Dual-VSTA/b11.htm) with a "Highly Recommended Award". The price is unbelievably good for my non-existant, ultra-dependent budget.

Considering the budget, (please save off any high-flyer alternatives, I'm able to look up the ladder, but that does not mean anything to me while being unable to afford it) do you have any alternatives to that motherboard? Please keep in mind that I was convinced since it has both DDR - DDR2, AGP - PCIe support, constructing an actual use and future upgrade.

Keep 'em coming!

[LeftEyeNine]

Umm, that was too hard ?

[_Martyr_]

I have no experience with the mobo, but as a happy new owner of a E6600 Id say go for it if you can! :2thumbsup:

[Husar]

Umm, that was too hard ?
I feel the urge to participate but it's not like I could give you another opinion.~;)

[Lemur]

Unless someone has direct experience with the board you're concerned with, it's gonna be hard for anyone to contribute a meaningful response. Good bet might be to check out the NewEgg reviews of the board, perhaps?

Linky. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16813157092) Seem to be generally positive reviews ...

[R'as al Ghul]

Hey LEN,

I'm running an ASRock board atm, the K7VT2. It's usable but could be nicer, but not for the cheap price. I wasn't looking forward to buy a cheapo mobo, having had EPOX and ASUS boards before, but then I heard it's a subcompany from Asus so I figured what the hell.
I runs 24/7 for two or more years now, no complaints at all!

It's a good idea for us poor students to just go half the way. I'm also looking for a Mobo atm that supports AGP and PCI-e. Haven't made any descision yet.
What does it cost you? It's about 55 Euros here in Germany.

R'as

P.S.: I had great success with installing the board on the XP system I had before. I just build it in, connected everything else as before and booted. Surprisingly XP just installed it plug&play like and that was it. I celebrated the whole day. :laugh4:

[LeftEyeNine]

Lemur, it seems an overall positive reference about the mobo, somehwere around %70 of the buyers like it.

R'as, it costs around 60 US Dollars here, pretty versatile and useful to me. I think after all these around, I'll get that mobo.

Thanks for the responses. :bow:

P.S. Husar, we're not done with you yet, don't rejoice. :smoking:

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

This actually sounds like a really good idea. The only problem I really have with my system at the moment is my proprietary Dell motherboard, which is rubbish, and also completely unsupported. I figured upgrading it would be too much of a hassle, but from the sounds of things this board would allow me to still use all of my old kit. I'd have to buy a new case and PSU, I think, but that would be about it.

Hmm, I wish I'd heard about this before I'd bought my new AGP card.

[Husar]

I heard about it from the clerk in the shop.
I wanted the AsRock 775i65G first, but he said getting a Conroe to work on it was too much of a hassle and this one costs only 10EUR more has an AGP and PCI-E slot and supports DDR1 and DDR2 RAM up to DDR2 667(I heard gains from DDR2 800 with a Conroe are not much, so I figured I wouldn't need more anyway given the additional cost of 800).
It was running pretty well since Tuesday now, only Win XP was loading slowly at startup(loading autostart stuff) but I didn't reinstall yet because I was missing some tools to do so.
Once I get back to my appartement later tomorrow, I will attempt a complete reinstall and then I may give a final opinion on how all the stuff works.
If there won't be any visit of mine for the next few days, chances are big it doesn't work at all anymore.~;)

Ok, some more things I may add.
I activated OS CPU control in the BIOS, installed some XP hotfix which only comes with SP3 and needs to be manually installed for SP2 I heard. This hotfix is supposed to fix some issues with DualCores and energy saving measures. On default windows handles them in a wrong way which can result in errors or bugs(windows may switch threads between cores running with different speeds).
So I set windows to lowest energy usage and according to CPU-Z, the cores now run on 1,6GHz when not used and automatically switch to 2.4GHz once the power is used. So far this seems to work perfectly well and might save me some money because for browsing the org and so on, I won't really need two cores with 2,4GHz each.:2thumbsup: