Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2

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Hlafordlaes

Senior member
May 21, 2006
271
2
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Originally posted by: The Fedex Pope
I wanted to run Dariks Boot and Nuke to wipe my 500gb SATA2 HD before I return it to BB. However, it fails, probly because it cant see the drive. When I turn Raid on in BIOS, it still fails. I tried all the disk wipe utils and they dont detect the HD. I burned the beta version of DBAN and still no go. Someone said that during POST you hit ctrl+z for SATA drives, but all that does is show me what the serial number is. There are options to move the array but since I only have 1 SATA HD they are greyed out. Is it even possible to wipe a SATA drive in DBAN or indeed any tool? I'm confused as to what Im supposed to do. The beta DBAN should support most SATA drives but it wont work on my rig.

Hadn't known of DBAN until your post; thanks.

Reading thru the program's FAQ, there's this:
Q: Does DBAN have SATA support?

A: Yes, the current release has full SATA support.

If DBAN does not detect a SATA controller running in native mode, then run the controller setup program and enable the "legacy PATA support" option. (ie: "Push <F2> to enter setup" when the computer starts.)

SATA drivers for new computers will be added to DBAN as they are published for Linux. Drivers for Microsoft Windows are incompatible with DBAN and cannot be added to DBAN...

Q: Why doesn't DBAN detect the SCSI disks attached to my RAID controller?

A: RAID controllers are unsupported. Only regular SCSI host adapters are supported.

Q: But I know people that use DBAN with RAID controllers...
Q: But why do you have changelog entries for RAID hardware?

A: DBAN does indeed have native drivers for most RAID implementations, but making it run can require configuration changes on the host. I cannot help if you lack enough clue to do this because I do not have hardware samples for development and testing. Send hardware if you want support for this equipment.

So it would appear that if it is to work at all, you must disable RAID mode in the BIOS. If that fails, the program does not support this chipset. Don't have a SATA drive myself else I'd test it.

 

Budarow

Golden Member
Dec 16, 2001
1,917
0
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Originally posted by: Phatjayunoi
Yeah its basically like saying "Whilst Core 2 Quad CPUs are capable on this motherboard, just don't expect it to run perfectly" :p.

But yeah, just blame the limited VIA chipset, and yet, its also why this is a good cheap motherboard in other aspects :).

Since it seems there's more than just a small chance a Q6600 will not work in my 4CoreDual, paying over 2 bills and messing around with mobo settings trying to get the proc to work and/or OC plus possibly having to return it anyway makes the upgrade less desirable in my mind.

I guess I'll have to wait on getting a Q6600 until the price is "right" at B&M Microcenter (MC) just in case I have to return it. The price on the Q6600 at MC is still $212 (with MI sales tax) and I read Intel will have a price drop on 4-20-08 (Q6600 will be $229 and Q6700 will be $279 in lots of 1k of course). Since both the Q6600 and Q6700 are "supported" for this mobo, maybe I'll wait even longer for the price of the Q6700 to drop (i.e., the 200 MHz increase in default speed plus 10x multiplier may make things easier).

Decisions, decisions:)

 

Phatjayunoi

Junior Member
Mar 6, 2008
19
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Yeah the reason why I went ahead and bought the Q6600 earlier this week was because the online retailer that I bought it from (www.overclockers.co.uk) started to do their own early "reasonable" price drop, and so I thought, the hell with it, just get it over and done with. It was around £160-ish before for the retail version, and they decreased the price down to £143. God knows how much cheaper it would be come the official price drop later this month. I just couldn't wait that long.

I knew that this motherboard had particular issues with the Quad Cores after spending a while reading through this entire thread, overclocking being the main focus of subject, but as long as it was able to run on stock speeds (Barely in some people's cases!), I would still be happy. I do a lot of multi-tasking so this processor is fine for my needs, and I don't really play the latest graphically intensive games like Crysis and all that anyway. Half-Life 2/Battlefield 2 is around my limit and this Q6600 blazes across these games.

But yeah, I guess it is entirely up to you when you would want to upgrade and then pray that it all works. Who knows, maybe you could be one of the lucky ones. :p
 

Sl4yer

Member
Feb 5, 2008
28
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Originally posted by: Budarow
Since it seems there's more than just a small chance a Q6600 will not work in my 4CoreDual, paying over 2 bills and messing around with mobo settings trying to get the proc to work and/or OC plus possibly having to return it anyway makes the upgrade less desirable in my mind.


It WILL work, just at 2.3GHz instead of 2.4. :D

Overclocking is another matter though!
 

Budarow

Golden Member
Dec 16, 2001
1,917
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Originally posted by: Sl4yer
Originally posted by: Budarow
Since it seems there's more than just a small chance a Q6600 will not work in my 4CoreDual, paying over 2 bills and messing around with mobo settings trying to get the proc to work and/or OC plus possibly having to return it anyway makes the upgrade less desirable in my mind.


It WILL work, just at 2.3GHz instead of 2.4. :D

Overclocking is another matter though!

MINT! (and yes I am "dating myself";) I LOVE the idea of "under clocking" a new $200 proc!
 

cpmee

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
303
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Originally posted by: The Fedex Pope

Well my A-data DDR2800 2x1gb ram came today. Promptly installed it (along with my old IDE HD, SATA still confuses me), and installed my nLite custom XP Sp2 that took around 20 minutes including the format. I've installed all my games and they all installed fine. No errors at all. In fact, no BSODs (knock wood) or installer errors, the system has been running snappy since 4pm when I installed the ram and turned it on. I can finally enjoy my computer. These last 2 weeks have been hell, but it goes to show that BAD ram (Kingston) can really make your life a miserable hell. Thanks for everyones help!


Dont forget to run memtest86+ for a few hours to make sure the ram is perfect. Its great ram, but they only give it a quick test at the factory. I returned my first stick after 1 error at an hour and a half of testing. No matter the price, you still want perfect sticks.
 
Mar 9, 2008
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Yeah I hope I didnt speak too soon, I forgot to run Memtest last night (was downloading Steam and all my games). I'll do so tonight, but the system has been up for 2 days now and no errors at all so thats promising.
 

brokencase

Member
Oct 7, 2007
80
0
0
Originally posted by: Phatjayunoi
I knew that this motherboard had particular issues with the Quad Cores after spending a while reading through this entire thread, overclocking being the main focus of subject, but as long as it was able to run on stock speeds (Barely in some people's cases!), I would still be happy. I do a lot of multi-tasking so this processor is fine for my needs, and I don't really play the latest graphically intensive games like Crysis and all that anyway. Half-Life 2/Battlefield 2 is around my limit and this Q6600 blazes across these games.

But yeah, I guess it is entirely up to you when you would want to upgrade and then pray that it all works. Who knows, maybe you could be one of the lucky ones. :p

Yep, it's a decent board if your not into overclocking. I just hope we start to see some decent parallel applications that can really take advantage of multiple cores before my q6600 becomes obsolete.

Actually what would be nice is a good multi-core linux distribution. Not just an smp kernel, but a concerted affair where every effort is made to make all the little pieces take advantage of multiple cores.

Take parallel bzip for example (http://compression.ca/pbzip2/). If pbzip2 could be substituted right now for the "normal" bzip then all linux installations/updates would naturally benefit from multiple cores.

People think it's going to be a miracle parallel compiler that comes along to make everything better.
I think it's going to be alot of hardwork and runtime libraries provided by Intel to make it all happen.







 

dmarook

Member
Sep 1, 2007
34
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There has been some talk about SATA drives being seen as IDE drives a few pages back. I presently have a couple of SATAII drives hooked up. How can I check if my drives are actually running in SATA mode or IDE mode? How can the operating system access a SATA drive on SATA port without running it at SATA mode?
 

Sl4yer

Member
Feb 5, 2008
28
0
0
Originally posted by: dmarook
There has been some talk about SATA drives being seen as IDE drives a few pages back. I presently have a couple of SATAII drives hooked up. How can I check if my drives are actually running in SATA mode or IDE mode? How can the operating system access a SATA drive on SATA port without running it at SATA mode?

Various ways:

1. Check for the drive in the initial POST screen. If it shows, it's in IDE mode. It will probably say it's in UDMA Mode 6.
2. Check your IDE/ATAPI devices in Device Manager, and see what is connected.
3. Run HDTach and see if your burst speed is more than 133 MB/s (the most supported under any PATA mode AFAIK).

Unless you installed Windows with RAID enabled in BIOS, the drive is almost certainly in IDE mode. SATA drives are backwards compatible with IDE modes, and even PIO modes. For more info on SATA, and why the 4CoreDual-SATA2 doesn't truly support SATA2, have a look here: http://www.serialata.org/
 

dmarook

Member
Sep 1, 2007
34
0
0
Originally posted by: Sl4yer
Originally posted by: dmarook
There has been some talk about SATA drives being seen as IDE drives a few pages back. I presently have a couple of SATAII drives hooked up. How can I check if my drives are actually running in SATA mode or IDE mode? How can the operating system access a SATA drive on SATA port without running it at SATA mode?

Various ways:

1. Check for the drive in the initial POST screen. If it shows, it's in IDE mode. It will probably say it's in UDMA Mode 6.
2. Check your IDE/ATAPI devices in Device Manager, and see what is connected.
3. Run HDTach and see if your burst speed is more than 133 MB/s (the most supported under any PATA mode AFAIK).

Unless you installed Windows with RAID enabled in BIOS, the drive is almost certainly in IDE mode. SATA drives are backwards compatible with IDE modes, and even PIO modes. For more info on SATA, and why the 4CoreDual-SATA2 doesn't truly support SATA2, have a look here: http://www.serialata.org/

Hmm. Just Checked with HD Tach. Both my SATA drive are showing burst speed above 150. 166 and 172 to be precise. I definitely did not Load any SATA drivers during XP installation and as far as I remember my settings are non-raid in BIOS. I did install the VIA chipset driver after XP install and in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have VIA Serial ATA Controller - 5372 present. My initial POST screen runs away too fast for me to check it. Looks like drives are in SATA mode!!!!:confused:
 
Mar 9, 2008
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"I definitely did not Load any SATA drivers during XP installation "

If you didnt intall the drivers during install, and its not a custom XP cd with drivers slipstreamed in, then its not running in SATA mode. I didnt install any drivers during XP and my SATA drive worked fine but it was in IDE mode. If you goto Device Manager, open properties on your HD and goto the details tab. If you see a ide/ in the beginning part of the string that its running IDE I think.
 

Sl4yer

Member
Feb 5, 2008
28
0
0
Originally posted by: dmarook
Hmm. Just Checked with HD Tach. Both my SATA drive are showing burst speed above 150. 166 and 172 to be precise. I definitely did not Load any SATA drivers during XP installation and as far as I remember my settings are non-raid in BIOS. I did install the VIA chipset driver after XP install and in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have VIA Serial ATA Controller - 5372 present. My initial POST screen runs away too fast for me to check it. Looks like drives are in SATA mode!!!!:confused:

Those are definitely SATAII speeds, so I wouldn't worry. Strange!

My burst speed varies from around 160 to 205. Nowhere near the magical 300 though.
 

dmarook

Member
Sep 1, 2007
34
0
0
Originally posted by: Sl4yer
Originally posted by: dmarook
Hmm. Just Checked with HD Tach. Both my SATA drive are showing burst speed above 150. 166 and 172 to be precise. I definitely did not Load any SATA drivers during XP installation and as far as I remember my settings are non-raid in BIOS. I did install the VIA chipset driver after XP install and in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have VIA Serial ATA Controller - 5372 present. My initial POST screen runs away too fast for me to check it. Looks like drives are in SATA mode!!!!:confused:

Those are definitely SATAII speeds, so I wouldn't worry. Strange!

My burst speed varies from around 160 to 205. Nowhere near the magical 300 though.

I think I read somewhere on the web that SATAII drives actually never get that speed in practical life.
 

dmarook

Member
Sep 1, 2007
34
0
0
Originally posted by: The Fedex Pope
"I definitely did not Load any SATA drivers during XP installation "

If you didnt intall the drivers during install, and its not a custom XP cd with drivers slipstreamed in, then its not running in SATA mode. I didnt install any drivers during XP and my SATA drive worked fine but it was in IDE mode. If you goto Device Manager, open properties on your HD and goto the details tab. If you see a ide/ in the beginning part of the string that its running IDE I think.

Well, I looked at the device manager. In details mode both my SATAII drives have IDE in the beginning of the string. I have one SATA1 drive on a SIL Image SATA controller Card and that has a SCSI in front of it. Now the surprising thing is in HD Tach that drive has a much poorer speed, approx 112 which is even slower than UDMA 6. Well as things are running ok for now I guess I will have to wait a bit till I bu***r up the OS and have to reinstall again. I will definitely experiment next time.
 

Nekot

Junior Member
Apr 8, 2008
2
0
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Looking to know if anyone has tried and/or had success with the new Sapphire 3850AGP....the reason I would go AGP one more time is the power supply I have is only 450W and no 6 pin pci adapter on it.....figure this would be an easy way to boost performance without buyin and installin a new powersupply on top of a pci-e card that only runs at 4x..........one reader couldn't get his to work....just wonderin if anyone else has ventured. I guess worst case scenerio if it had issues with the Asrock board, I could put the 3850 in my older P4 comp to give it a little more boost and keep it at my girls place.
 

repsol23

Junior Member
Mar 30, 2008
15
0
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Originally posted by: Nekot
Looking to know if anyone has tried and/or had success with the new Sapphire 3850AGP....the reason I would go AGP one more time is the power supply I have is only 450W and no 6 pin pci adapter on it.....figure this would be an easy way to boost performance without buyin and installin a new powersupply on top of a pci-e card that only runs at 4x..........one reader couldn't get his to work....just wonderin if anyone else has ventured. I guess worst case scenerio if it had issues with the Asrock board, I could put the 3850 in my older P4 comp to give it a little more boost and keep it at my girls place.

I actually jsut did an install last night on my new asrock 4core board last night. I was using a p4 3.2e @4.16 ghz for gaming with a Powercolor 3850agp and was happy with the performance increase in that system. I just got a e6700 and board last night and got it running after some fussing with. Seems this board doesn't like my ram, DDR400 OCZ 2gb El xtc Platinum, but it tops out at FSB 278. I was able to get orthos stable for 4 hours before I turned it off to come to work this morning, but I will go home and mess with it some more tonight. I also order some new ram this morning hopefully this will make it even more possible to overclock. As for benchmarks, I have yet to run anything due to having to start with a fresh install with this board!!
 

cpmee

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
303
0
0
There is no reason not to believe the Sapphire 3850AGP wont work with the 4coredual-Sata2. But frankly, you may be one of the few users with that combo. With the PCI-E and AGP slots on this board, most if not all will favor the PCI-E option, if nothing else its cheaper unless one gets a hot sale.
 

repsol23

Junior Member
Mar 30, 2008
15
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Well, gotta admit I am quite happy with my initial results, I have been able to improve my 3dmark06 score from a score of 7100+ (p4 3.2e @ 4.25) to over 10700 (e6700 at fsb=282). I currently am running ddr400 ocz ram but am awaiting some geil ddr2 800 ram to see if I can increase my fsb. Here is a posting with my pic for those interested:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/...=742209&postcount=1682
 

cpmee

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
303
0
0
3dmark06 score from a score of 7100+ (p4 3.2e @ 4.25) to over 10700 (e6700 at fsb=282).

Thats very good and very good for ddr1 ram. Dont expect too much more.
 

repsol23

Junior Member
Mar 30, 2008
15
0
0
Originally posted by: cpmee
3dmark06 score from a score of 7100+ (p4 3.2e @ 4.25) to over 10700 (e6700 at fsb=282).

Thats very good and very good for ddr1 ram. Dont expect too much more.

Yeah, this ram has been a pain to try and use for overclocking. It was great when using my p4c800e board, was able to get this ram up to fsb of 269 with timings of 3/3/3/7 and 1.8V but on this board I have to set all to auto and run at CR of 2. My Geil DDR2 800 should be here tomorrow hopefully this will help out a little more. I have been able to get my board to run a fsb of 315 but wasn't orthos stable for more then 20 minutes or so, but I can set 310 and have been stable now for over 4 hours!! I have been really satisfied with the board so far, hopefully it will not let me down. As for my 3dmark06 score I have been able to break the 11K mark finally. Heres a link to a pic for those interested:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/...=743907&postcount=1723
 

steelskinz

Junior Member
Mar 25, 2008
9
0
0
Could someone post the best bios tweak with 1.90a version please ?

Does someone tried to include with nLite the SATA drivers to avoid the floppy at windows installation ?
 

cpmee

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
303
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0
The tweaks for 1.90a are the same as for 1.80, 1.70. The only difference with the "a" custom bios is the fan speed settings, which is a personal preference.
 

steelskinz

Junior Member
Mar 25, 2008
9
0
0
Yes but each of us have different settings and no reply is specify to follow the best settings.
In the 1.90a there's another option for PCIE for instance, not only fan setting or cpu step.
 

zeg

Junior Member
Apr 16, 2008
1
0
0
Hi there,

does anybody know this: does the Core Duo E6850 work on this MoBo? Well of course it not officially supported by ASRock becaus it is an 1333MHz-CPU and the 4CoreDual-SATA2 does only support 1066MHz-CPUs. But does this CPU work as 9*266MHz=2,4GHz anyway? Are there any problems?

With kind regards
-zeg