Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 + ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA + ASRock 775Dual-VSTA

[Deleauvive]

@zaoan
The price seems a bit low for a fully functional HD 4850, but I don't see the misplacement of the heatsink as an issue. ATI / AMD (same with nVidia) propose a reference design and base speed values for their various boards, Sapphire and other manufacturers (OEM's) are free to modify the design and even overclock their products to a certain extend.
I myself would favor Gigabyte or HIS over Sapphire or PowerColor, but I guess the price will be different (mine is a Palit, very close to reference design except for the fan).


@Sparkion
Nice to hear from you.
the subforum in which one is supposed to post about BIOS problems with VIA based motherboards is the following :

http://forum.pctreiber.net/forums/59-Sonstige-ASRock-Produkte

That's nice of you to have sent an email. Could you register on their forum, and post the letter as a new thread there please ? I think it would increase our issue visibility.

 

[zaoan]

Thanks Sparkion, will think about it and if the price suits me, probably will try it.

All right now, i received today my ddr2 modules. The problem is the system won't boot when i plug them in. It just makes some awful 3 long beeps, as if it does not recognize them.
I've bought 2 modules of 1GB DDR2 533 DIMM CL4 Transcend and a 2GB module of what i was describing earlier in my posts: VD2U800B2G6-B DDR2 800(6) 2GX16 U-DIMM (V-DATA). Bought them on ebay, the transcend ones bought them as new, they also seem new and unused. The 2gb stick was not tested, so the guy sold it for testing.
I've tried every combination, the 1gb sticks together and switched places, only 1gb stick, only the 2gb stick, then the 2gb with 1gb stick. Nothing works, as if they're broken or my ddr2 slots on the mobo are broken.

Could the rams be the problem or the slots for ddr2 on the mobo?
I also cleared the CMOS again by shorting it. When i put the old ddr module, it works. Do i have to make some changes in the bios before switching to ddr2? I guess the mobo should've recognized them.

Any idea would be fine.


edit: @Deleauvive, was writing when you posted, sure it seems something strange with the price, but now i'm focusing on the ram thing

 

[Deleauvive]

Could the rams be the problem or the slots for ddr2 on the mobo?

Neither. I don't think you're experiencing a hardware failure.
It might be that clearing the CMOS settings won't be sufficient.

Try unplugging everything and removing the CMOS battery for the night (or a good 5 hours).
The next morning, carefully insert the 2x1 GB Transcend sticks in any order, and tell us how it went.

 

[zaoan]

Yeah, well i also removed the battery for about 20 mins or so. 1st attempt with the 2 transcend sticks, same beeps. Then i removed them and inserted only the 2gb stick, it booted, was able to get into bios and there it was, ddr2 slot 1 = 2048 MB.
Shutdown pc again, added a 1gb stick in slot 2, booted again, bios shows 3GB of ram in single channel.
The thing is it wasn't loading windows after restart, it's set to boot from HDD but does not boot. I pressed again the restart button and nothing, gets stuck at reading the cpu, memory and hdd's.
Decided to press the shutdown button and restart the whole thing again, but at this point it gets me back to my 1st "big problem", no beeps, no nothing. Just the fans running smoothly and no power on the monitor.
Then i added only the 2x1GB sticks, no luck here, the 3 beeps again.
Replaced again the modules with DDR and it boots properly.

So i'm guessing it's something to do with the ddr2 slots after all? Probably they haven't been used and get a hard time reading the DDR2 sticks?
Haven't tried with one of those contact sprays yet, not sure if that'll do anything.


EDIT: I just can't help myself trying over and over again. I removed again the ddr sticks, added the 2GB stick in slot1 and it finally booted, got into windows.
Here's what aida64 is telling. I haven't got a clue on what's written there, not sure if the values are ok or how should they actually be. Would change some values if i only knew which one, if adjustments have to be done.
Will try to add another 1gb stick, see if it boots.


EDIT2: System boots with the 2gb stick regardless of the slot i'm using, hence this one seems ok. When i add a 1gb stick, i'll call them y and z, if i add y it boots, bios sees the entire 3gb in single channel, but freezes. If i add z, it boots properly but bios only sees the 2gb stick.
It sounds to me, so far, that the ones that were supposed to be new sticks are the faulty ones, or is just my mobo the one doing these tricks?!...


EDIT3( probably last one): With the 2x1gb sticks, z and y, system does not boot. Only the beeps.
It only boots with the 2gb stick. Although cpu-z and aida64 both see the 1gb stick, bios doesn't.
It won't boot with either 1gb stick, so that was a good 15 euros investment.
Lucky i got the 2gb stick for half a price. Will search for another 2gb stick good deal and hope that should do it.

 

[Deleauvive]

Yeah, well i also removed the battery for about 20 mins or so.

What can I say ? You're not giving it enough time. I use those very 1 GB Transcend DDR2 sticks, and they work perfectly fine with my setup. With 2 different 2 GB DDR2 sticks, it will be even harder to get the set to work properly.

Another alternative is inserting the 2 GB A-Data one, nothing else, and leave it that way. You shouldn't need additional volatile memory for Counter Strike or similar fps gaming IMHO.

 

[zaoan]

That's what I'm using now, the 2gb v-data stick. Maybe I'll find another similar stick for 2-3 euros and will try it out.
I'm guessing there has to be a problem with these transcend sticks, otherwise the v-data one wouldn't have worked neither.
I'm telling you, one of them gets recognized but reboots the system just before Windows logo appears. After that it only gets recognized as a 512 mb and freezes the system.
The other one simply does nothing, as bios does not see it.

Will try to test them somewhere, and will also try to test the mobo with other modules, to see who's fault is it.
Will keep you posted, thanks for the replies, it seems not many read this thread lately.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Well, my old secondary drive (Maxtor IDE 160GB) just died, with lots of my gaming stuff on it. Thought it was my primary WD Black 640, since I couldn't boot, but just a scare.

However, the incident allowed my wife to give her blessing to a new toy, a WD Black 1TB. All my essentials, going back to DOS drivers for 80's hardware and such, are now on two independent drives again, thank goodness.

But I did lose a lot of old gaming software, of the Duke-Doom DOS era and earlier, which was only supposed to be on that drive "for a sec." Some of that stuff dated from CompuServe BBS servers, pre-internet, and some had even been with me ever since DOS 2.+. Me cry big time.:'(

I unplugged my SATA DVD drive to make room; those things are useless these days.

Glad to be calmly and collectedly working on my trusty 4Core once again.

 

[NeedAdviceFast]

Hey guys,

A cousin of mine recently asked me about upgrading his PC.

He has an AsRock 775V88+ MBO . He recently upgraded his OS to Vista, but the machine is struggling with only 512MB of ram.

I believe that the MBO supports a max. of 4gb, but at the moment we plan on purchasing 2GB.

I checked out the user manual for the 775V88+ and here's what it says:

4 DDR DIMM Slots: DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, and DDR4
2 DDR DIMM Slots Supports PC3200 (DDR400), Max.1GB,
4 DDR DIMM Slots Supports PC2700 (DDR333) /
PC2100 (DDR266), Max. 3.5GB,


My question is, can i pick up 2x 1Gb DDR 400Mhz ram modules or are the speed and size of 2X 1gb DDR 400mhz modules not supported by this MBO?

if i cant go the aforementioned route, could someone please provide me with a solution that will work?

will i have to go with 4x 512MB DDR 300Mhz modules ... or?

thanks

 

[Deleauvive]

4 DDR DIMM Slots: DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, and DDR4
2 DDR DIMM Slots Supports PC3200 (DDR400), Max.1GB,
4 DDR DIMM Slots Supports PC2700 (DDR333)

According the 775V88+ manual, the PT880 (the corresponding Asrock chipset) would support DDR3 (III) ? I don't think so.
Some (not all) 2 GB 400 MHz rated PC2-6400 DDR2 (II) modules might work, but the most compatible (and affordable) modules IMHO would be 266 MHz PC2-5300 ones, preferably in 1 GB units.

Such is the case with my setup, I use 2x1 GB Transcend PC2-5300 DDR2 sticks, with Dual Channel activated. Although I use a different Asrock mobo than yours, they share the same Northbridge :

 

[NeedAdviceFast]

According the 775V88+ manual, the PT880 (the corresponding Asrock chipset) would support DDR3 (III) ? I don't think so.
Some (not all) 2 GB 400 MHz rated PC2-6400 DDR2 (II) modules might work, but the most compatible (and affordable) modules IMHO would be 266 MHz PC2-5300 ones, preferably in 1 GB units.

Such is the case with my setup, I use 2x1 GB Transcend PC2-5300 DDR2 sticks, with Dual Channel activated. Although I use a different Asrock mobo than yours, they share the same Northbridge :

hello and thanks for the reply.

i guess the problem is that the manual is poorly written.

this part, "4 DDR DIMM Slots: DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, and DDR4" is referring to the actual slots on the board and how they are labeled, not the type of slot.

"2 DDR DIMM Slots Supports PC3200 (DDR400), Max.1GB," this had me a bit confused , but i'm guessing that by "Max.1GB" they mean a maximum of 1GB total per channel, and not a maximum of 1GB ram module per DIMM slot.

Unfortunately AsRock's website does not provide a list of RAM modules which are supported by this board. If there is somebody out there that is still using this MBO i would really appreciate it if you could provide me with a tested RAM solution. what brand is compatible and what size RAM modules to purchase?. My goal is to install 2GB's of RAM total if possible.

Deleauvive, do you really think that DDR2 will work on this MBO? from what i remember, DDR2 is not backwards compatible, and from what i've read in the 775V88+ users manual, it looks like this board only supports DDR RAM.

 

[zaoan]

Quoted from Asrock's website:

- Dual Channel DDR memory technology
- Supports DDR400/333/266 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- DIMM slots: 4
- Max. capacity of system memory: 4GB*
I guess this is the mobo. It states that the maximum frequency can be 400Mhz. So a normal PC3200 DDR stick should work. Normally, 4x1GB sticks should work, it is the maximum you can add.


Ontopic again, still searching for some good deal video cards. Would it be wise to make a change from my hd4650 agp to a hd4770 pci-e (ddr5), would there be any improvement? Or should i pick the 4850, still?
For the 4850 guess i'm gonna have to change my psu also.
In the meantime, i'm waiting for another 2gb DDR2 stick to arrive, will see how that goes.
Cheers.

 

[Deleauvive]

Deleauvive, do you really think that DDR2 will work on this MBO?

You're right. It should be DDR1 modules, not DDR2 ones.
DIMM is the generic term for Double Data Rate memory, that got me confused.

Your board is not an hybrid type, hence it won't allow choosing between DDR1 and DDR2, like the more versatile DualSATA II does. Also, I will have to remove my reservation concerning 200 MHz DDR memory (400 MHz is simply a marketing gimmick in this case).

This said, I still believe 2x1 GB, preferably featuring similar modules, should do the trick.
Don't expect a spectacular boost though, the Pentium 4 has started long ago to show its age.

Any relatively known brand should work without a hitch :
Kingston, Corsair, G*Skill, even "Samsung"... Maybe obtaining modules with Hynix chips along the sticks would give them a little edge.

The tricky part with this chipset is really using PC2-6400 (actually 400 MHz rated memory) DDR2 modules in pair, at least with some of the Asrock boards we have tested.

 

[Deleauvive]

Would it be wise to make a change from my hd4650 agp to a hd4770 pci-e (ddr5), would there be any improvement? Or should i pick the 4850, still?

Are you sure you don't mean the HD 4870 ? The HD 4770 isn't listed on the VGA compatibility page, on Asrock's web site. And no, I am afraid the HD 4850 is still the superior graphic card, even with GDDR3. If (approximately) 40 quids is too much for you, you can always go with the HD 3850 as Sparkion suggested. It will simply go the wastebin along with the motherboard afterwards, when both components will have done their time (especially if you order an AGP variant).

In the meantime, i'm waiting for another 2gb DDR2 stick to arrive, will see how that goes.

Not as expected ? Just guessing here, never mind.
Joke aside, if both sticks are similar, it could be an interesting test (we're suspecting the DualSata II is picky when it comes to various 2 GB modules working in pair).

 

[Deleauvive]

I did lose a lot of old gaming software, of the Duke-Doom DOS era and earlier, which was only supposed to be on that drive "for a sec." Some of that stuff dated from CompuServe BBS servers, pre-internet, and some had even been with me ever since DOS 2.+

Sorry to hear that. Have you completely given up on sending the damaged drive to some data recovery company, such as OnTrack.
I might cost you, but ultimately they might be able to salvage a few of these hard to find files.

Neither was I too good at planning ahead my own backups btw.
Curiously, my biggest loss did concern tiny files : Huge Jazz and Fusion .m3u playlists painstakingly assembled over months. Using the shuffle function while listening to my mp3's proves immensely less rewarding for reasons that would be too long to explain. Nearly all of them gone after some inane use of the Windows restore feature. HDD partition landed at the wrong place, that crucial "Documents" folder got overwritten.

It would have taken me 15 seconds to duplicate those playlists to some safer place. Oh well...

 

[zaoan]

Are you sure you don't mean the HD 4870 ? The HD 4770 isn't listed on the VGA compatibility page, on Asrock's web site. And no, I am afraid the HD 4850 is still the superior graphic card, even with GDDR3. If (approximately) 40 quids is too much for you, you can always go with the HD 3850 as Sparkion suggested. It will simply go the wastebin along with the motherboard afterwards, when both components will have done their time (especially if you order an AGP variant).

Not as expected ? Just guessing here, never mind.
Joke aside, if both sticks are similar, it could be an interesting test (we're suspecting the DualSata II is picky when it comes to various 2 GB modules working in pair).

Quoted from PCTreiber forums:
Support -> ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Bios 2.20A

Moin,

Die HD 4770 läuft definitiv völlig problemlos mit dem 4coredual-sata2, allerdings darf man sich natürlich keine extremen Performance Sprünge erwarten, da zumindest mein E4500 und der 4x Slot hier langsam an seine Grenzen kommen sollte.
(BIOS 2.20a)​

- See more at: http://forum.pctreiber.net/threads/...oreDual-SATA2-Bios-2-20A#sthash.Br2QQycr.dpuf

Using google translate, the guy says he had no problems running the 4770 on this mobo. I saw it even here in the first few pages, someone said he was using it with no problems. If i can get it for 2 cents, will sure try it.
I'm also considering that 4850 for 25 euros+10 euros for shipment.

And as for the ram, I am currently running the v-data ddr2 2gb stick, working good so far. I'm just waiting for another Kingston 2gb stick, to see how they cope. It'll probably run at the speed of this one, since Kingston has 800mhz, if it runs at all, because i'm receiving it for testing, the guy removed it from a broken mobo, so he has no idea if it works or not.



EDIT: I am insane, i know. I found this video card, GTS 450, at 50 euros. I've searched google and found some people who said they use it. Also on the pctreiber forum, someone from Asrock posted that normally a gts 450 should work with this mobo, or was he talking about the 4coredual-sata2 REV. 2.0, i guess they have the same chip. How about it? Geez, i would freakin' buy them all, just to test them )

 

[Deleauvive]

Mixing DDR2 sticks running at different speed is asking for trouble (instability issues that might take a while to notice), especially with this chipset. Of course, you might as well get along with it, but no guarantee (check them with a few rows of Memtest86+, if you can)

Oh and that's not insanity, I would rather call it indecision, a perfectly normal trait when some people are offered various options at an affordable price. I think we have made it clear which cards we were favoring, which ones offered the better compatibility (just because some people got a unusual card to work doesn't mean it will work wonders with your setup).

Also, that VGA compatibility list was made for a reason. I don't think you can point at some posts here and there of users pretending they managed to get it to work (for how long ? with which set of drivers ? with Aero on or off ?) thus discarding the list right off the bat. Not without additional research / testing at least. The HD 4470 was kinda experimental, production was dropped fast AFAIK, and that GTS card under full load will put quite a strain on your PSU.

 

[meanscotsman]

Problem after flashing bios

Hoping someone can help me.

I flashed my ASRock 4CoreDual-Sata2 Rev. 2.0 board with Bios 2.20a. I used a DOS bootable USB and everything worked fine until I exited BIOS and tried to boot.

I got the Windows splash screen but it froze (greyed out). Rebooted and the same thing happened. Now I get the Windows black and white screen asking if I want to start in Safe Mode etc. If I select Safe Mode, the screen scrolls through a whole lot of driver-related text and then just stops. If I select start Windows normally, I get the splash screen but that's it. If I select last known good configuration, I get the Windows splash screen, not greyed out, and it starts to load, with blue bars showing but then freezes.

Other than flashing the BIOS I have changed nothing and everything was running fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing this?

Thanks

My Set up:
ASRock 4CoreDual-Sata2 rev. 2
BIOS 2.20a
Q6600 CPU
2x1GB DDR RAM
Sapphire Radeon HD3850 AGP
Soundblaster Audigy 2
(plus hard drives, CD/DVD drives etc. - no RAID or anything)
OS - Windows XP SP3
All running at stock - no OC

 

[Deleauvive]

Well, at least your computer passes BIOS splash screen (POST), doesn't it ?
After flashing, what you did was a soft reset apparently. I would suggest to turn off the computer, and wait a few seconds next time.

About your issue, did you try to reset the BIOS values to defaults ?
Or the other way round, it could be that there were certain settings in the BIOS that got modified after the BIOS update, thus preventing the computer from booting up Windows (most notably DRAM Frequency / Flexibility Option).

Also, can you tell us which DOS environment you used to perform the BIOS update ?
You can always use a favorite of mine to make your USB pendrive bootable : Rufus, retrying flashing with the same unofficial BIOS, and see how things goes.

 

[meanscotsman]

Hi Deleauvive, thanks for getting back to me.

I flashed the BIOS with a USB stick using FreeDOS (having used Rufus), ASRflash.exe and the 2.20a bios file.

Before doing so, I went into bios, loaded defaults, then saved changes and exited, hit F11 to get the boot menu and booted from the USB. After flashing the bios, I restarted with ctr-alt-del and went into bios set-up again, loaded defaults, then exited. At this point, I got a black screen with a blinking cursor and realised I'd not done anything about boot order. So I shut down and went back into bios. It was looking for a floppy, which I don't have, so changed the settings to boot from my HDD.

The PC posted but XP got hung up. I restarted (this time with a forced shut down, holding the power button in) and went back into bios.

I checked my boot set up, drive order etc., and changed everything from the default settings to what they had been before I flashed the bios. PC still posted but XP still wouldn't load.

I've since made all changes to the bios to match the settings from before the flash (mainly disabling speedstep - everything else is pretty much on auto) but I'm no further forward - XP still not loading up.

My gut tells me things should work but there is something simple stopping me. I don't know if it's a bios setting or not or a driver problem. I'll try the DRAM settings you mention and see it that helps.

I've also read elsewhere about clearing CMOS as a way of getting things running but I haven't done that yet. My bios flash appears to have worked, the PC posts and I can enter bios, make changes, save and exit and, despite XP not loading, when I restart and go back into bios, the changes have taken. I don't know if clearing CMOS will help or not.

So, if anyone can offer any more help with this, that would be fantastic!

Thanks

 

[meanscotsman]

Just a quick follow-up question, Deleauvive

When you say, "turn off the computer, and wait a few seconds next time" do you mean, after the bios has flashed successfully from the USB, perform a shut down by holding in the power button, rather than restarting with ctr-alt-del?


Thanks

 

[Deleauvive]

That's what I meant (also called cold reboot).

 

[Hlafordlaes]

@meanscotsman,

You may have varied the acpi/hard disk settings by changing the bios. If XP was set up in a different mode, you will have to re-install.

...

After my secondary hard disk died as reported earlier, I set about migrating the OS from the primary and older drive to the new hard drive (used Paragon), which left a lot of bad index entries, as well as a bad icon cache, poorly configured libraries, and dual entries in Media Player libraries. Deleted them all and regenerated.

Stopped overclocking to do this and set my CAS down to 4 from 5, and went back to 2T timing. Given my recent debacle, decided to get a proper recovery method in place using Acronis (free for WD hard drive users.)

That led me to first get my OS completely error-free, updated, with the right drivers (not always newest, as for example latest NVidia driver gives Mem Mgmt BSODs, so still on prior version), and with all software updated.

The arduous process of hunting down and fixing all errors and warnings in the Event Viewer was enlightening. I'd never done that in such a completely obsessive manner, but this time I set about resolving messages even Microsoft and/or online gurus suggest ignoring. Several arcane manual registry fixes were in order. I now reliably boot to no errors or warnings of any kind, and have a little keyboard trick for manually generating BSODs for testing. All cool.

(Use of Office 2003 will still generate some error msgs related to HHTML because it violates a Win security update that doesn't like programs accessing the internet from help files, but even that has a registry fix (2 if in x64).)

The upshot is, once Win7SP1, drivers, and all software are in tip-top shape, and the hard drive defragged, I am getting not just a little, but a mega improvement in the performance of my system, even compared to the earlier overclock, and with much faster boot-to-calm-desktop times.

So, in short, reason for my little post is to serve as a little reminder that performance can often be more enhanced by OS sleuthing than the mild overclocking we can get on these boards.

My $0.02

 

[meanscotsman]

Hi Hlafordlaes and thanks for your help

Can you clarify what you mean by acpi/hard disk settings? As far as I know, I had default settings for acpi in bios and haven't changed them. But I'm not all that experienced with setting up bios (which is why most of my settings were default to begin with).

And do you mean I need to reinstall XP or reinstall the bios? If XP, I've done a repair install before (on another PC) and it worked fine, without losing any data. But it was a PITA and I was hoping I could avoid doing this if I don't have to!

Sorry if I'm being dense here but I want to take things slow and not do anything too radical if I don't have to.

My main reason for flashing the bios to 2.20a was to allow me to install more RAM. I then plan to upgrade to Windows 7. But I'm loathe to try Windows 7 until I've recovered from the current problem and ensured everything is running as it should.

Thanks

 

[meanscotsman]

OK - have tried changing a few bios settings, including DRAM frequency and flexibility, but still no joy.

Reset them all to defaults - still no joy. Set them all back to what they were before I flashed the bios - no go.

Tried to boot from my DOS USB stick and now it's not working for some reason! So unless I re-set it or set up another one on another PC, I won't be able to reflash the bios - either with 2.20a or back to 2.20. Not sure why the USB stick's no longer booting.

So, to summarise, I can boot to bios, get into bios set up with F2, with F8 can get to the Windows safe mode screen but whatever option I select the PC freezes, and can get to the boot menu with F11. But I can't get XP to load up.

Would a repair install or even a fresh install of XP cure this?

 

[zaoan]

In my opinion, it wouldn't hurt to try. At least you get to see if you can reinstall. If you can, it's a good sign, and if not...
As you can see a few posts back, I've had a similar issue because of a faulty memory stick, as I tend to believe it is faulty. I could enter bios, but no windows, and without it, it works fine.
Don't think could be the same issue for you all of a sudden, with a ram stick, but you can give it a shot.
Hope you get to solve it.



And as for me, I bought myself a new hd4770 for 40 euros, instead of buying a used hd4850 for the same price. Just have to wait a few days to arrive and will see if it even works.
Fingers crossed