ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - Socket 939 with PCI-E and real AGP and Socket AM2 upgrade path

[WT]

Well, for anyone that really wants to see what all the fun was about, the board is available as a refurb here:

CompGeks Asrock 939 SATAII refurb

Dunno why I feel compelled to buy one, but I have a spare Opteron 144 sitting here doing nothing. I checked on the Egg for a 939 board and found that they carry more Socket A (462) boards total (3) than they do 754 and 939 combined !! (2)

Anyhoo, cheers to a great board and for anyone that wants to pick one up. :thumbsup:

 

[SynthDude2001]

Thanks for the link WT, I had no idea that you could still get one of these (even as a refurb). I also have a 939 3200+ just sitting in a drawer unused (after my cheap X2 upgrade a few months back), I'm kinda tempted to pick up another one just to make use of it...

 

[Komete]

I'm back. Like previous posters I was having a problem running dual core and AMD optimizer on vista. I could stress the cpu till I was blue in the face but web browsing would make my pc hang. Thank god for this thread. Saved my butt twice now.


New Question, what bios are you using SynthDude?

I'm using the latest bios from asrock (2.3 I think) but I'm finding I'm locked to 10x250fsb max for over clocking. I thought I remembered the asrock bioses locking you at 275fsb. That would be good but this 250 sucks. I have no doubts there is still some headroom to go on this cpu. I'm at 2.5 now at stock volts. I'd really like to get back up to 2.7 as I had my opteron single core running.

The old OCW bios I was using that allowed me to go up 9x325+ won't work with this CPU. Any hacked bioses out there based on a later asrock bios?

Thought I'd ask before I flash to an earlier bios and find I have to put my opteron back in just to flash to a later bios.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Komete
I'm back. Like previous posters I was having a problem running dual core and AMD optimizer on vista. I could stress the cpu till I was blue in the face but web browsing would make my pc hang. Thank god for this thread. Saved my butt twice now.


New Question, what bios are you using SynthDude?

I'm using the latest bios from asrock (2.3 I think) but I'm finding I'm locked to 10x250fsb max for over clocking. I thought I remembered the asrock bioses locking you at 275fsb. That would be good but this 250 sucks. I have no doubts there is still some headroom to go on this cpu. I'm at 2.5 now at stock volts. I'd really like to get back up to 2.7 as I had my opteron single core running.

The old OCW bios I was using that allowed me to go up 9x325+ won't work with this CPU. Any hacked bioses out there based on a later asrock bios?

Thought I'd ask before I flash to an earlier bios and find I have to put my opteron back in just to flash to a later bios.

I'm using the somewhat older 1.8 BIOS, I believe. Anything after about 1.7 (IIRC) should remove the 274MHz HTT lock -- in fact, I'm running 295x9 right now. My guess is that you need to lower "CPU-NB Link Speed" (that is, HTT multiplier) to 800MHz or even 600MHz. 800MHz indicates a 4x multiplier (for effective HTT speed), so at 250MHz your HTT would be at exactly 1000 - and in general, for stability, you don't want to go higher than that. I'd be willing to bet that that's your problem.

Edit: I previously had a guess about 1T/2T causing your stability issues here, but from your earlier posts I see that you're already running 2T (check just to make sure). However you said you tried to run the AMD Dual Core Optimizer on Vista - my understanding is that that's for Windows XP only; I have never installed it since I started running Vista (since most of the timing problems that it fixed in games under XP, seem not to happen in Vista in the first place). So maybe try uninstalling that...that would be my first guess anyway.

 

[Komete]

No the 2.3 bios is certainly locked at 250. even if I set it 251 with a 133 mem ratio and a htt of 600 it boots at stock 2ghz. I think I'm going to roll back to an earlier bios and sre what happens. I just hope I don't roll back to one that doesn't support my cpu and have to swap out my dual core for my single and flash again.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Komete
No the 2.3 bios is certainly locked at 250. even if I set it 251 with a 133 mem ratio and a htt of 600 it boots at stock 2ghz. I think I'm going to roll back to an earlier bios and sre what happens. I just hope I don't roll back to one that doesn't support my cpu and have to swap out my dual core for my single and flash again.

That's pretty strange, I'm positive that I at least tested 2.3 temporarily and was able to use >274MHz HTT speed. But my personal opinion/observation is that all of the BIOS releases after 1.8-1.9 or so are mostly geared towards improvements for AM2 card users and aren't of much benefit to 939 users. I don't really have much to back that up though.

So you're saying that anything above 250MHz automatically resets you to the default 200MHz? Does it fail to boot at the higher speed a few times before that reset? What multiplier are you using?

 

[Komete]

I'm using the default multiplier of 10. Going to bios of 1.8 I was able to boot at 2.6 but it wasn't stable. After reading your post I'm wondering if it was just failing to boot and it just turned it back to default. So far I haven't gotten 2.6ghz stable so 2.5 may be the max of this chip. It's just weird since it is at 2.5 at stock voltage and giving it more isn't helping. I have the vmod on the motherbord so I can give it some more juice and have. I guess I shouldn't complain about 2.5 on such a cheap chip.

 

[Araemo]

I'd just like to post this for other people to reference:

I had a very odd issue on this board when I got a new SATA CD/DVD burner.

I plugged it into the SATA2 chip, because I had heard of people having issues with it, I felt more comfortable having a burner plugged in than one of my hard drives.

Prior to plugging it in, I updated the drivers for it from the jmicron website. (BAD IDEA!).

JMicron lists drivers for the JMB36x family of raid controllers, and this is a JMB360/363, so I thought that was correct (Note that jmicron does not list ANY OTHER DRIVERS OR CHIPSETS AT ALL on their website).

The issue I was having was that any time something started accessing the CD drive, whether or not there was a CD, a DVD, or nothing in the drive, my computer would 'hiccup'(jerky mouse motion, etc), and my sound card would emit HORRIBLE loud screaching noises. I'm not using the onboard sound, but an old audigy PCI card, but if I was playing music in winamp when this happened, winamp would continue 'playing', but I would get no more sound(after the few seconds of screeches) until I paused/stopped and restarted playback.

The drive worked perfectly, it could read both CDs and DVDs fine, and burning worked properly(I was almost afraid to test that, but I didn't make any coasters).

I was convinced I had finally stressed my poor old 375W enermax to it's limit, but I finally stumbled upon the fact that the drivers from ASRock's website were signifigantly different from the drivers from jmicron, and tried the ASRock ones again. This seems to have cleared up all my problems that appeared since installing this drive.


TL;DR version: Use Jmicron drivers from ASRock's website (JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller), NOT the JMB36x raid drivers, or your sound card may asplode your eardrums, and resume from standby may fail.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Araemo
[...]

TL;DR version: Use Jmicron drivers from ASRock's website (JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller), NOT the JMB36x raid drivers, or your sound card may asplode your eardrums, and resume from standby may fail.

Interesting! I've always had a certain distrust for the SATA II controller on this board, and I've had it disabled for quite a while - I only have two SATA devices anyway (one real, one through an IDE-SATA adapter).

And speaking of resume from standby, I've had a hell of a time getting sleep/resume to work again in the past week. It used to work perfectly with my old 9700 Pro (after spending a long time getting that working, anyway), but it never once worked after I installed an X1900XT a few months back. And, since summer is here (in Texas anyway), it would be nice to have S3 sleep (suspend to RAM) working again for when I'm away from the computer.

Long story short, here's the summary of things that worked for me in Vista64:

- +5VSB jumper on motherboard ("USBPWR", upper-left corner near I/O shield) set to on (pins 2-3)

- Repost video on STR resume set to enabled in the BIOS

- USB Selective Suspend set to enabled in Vista's advanced power settings

- Putting the system to sleep with the keyboard's sleep button. Using the case's power button seemed unreliable in that it either failed to sleep sometimes, or froze on attempted resume. Seemed to have something to do with "forced" vs. "unforced" sleep.

- Updated to latest beta BIOS 2.31c - was using 1.80 before, but not sure now if this was really necessary. I'd read something about updated ACPI tables in this version though.

Edit: - The other thing was to disable ReadyBoost. It seems to have very intermittent issues with sleep; sometimes you can do 5 sleep/resume cycles in a row with no problems, other times it will hang on attempting to sleep or resume. I guess it's not really necessary with 4GB of RAM anyway.

Edit 2: - It may not be ReadyBoost after all, though I'm still not sure. I was still getting intermittent sleep problems with the flash drive disconnected. So maybe it's my USB HDTV tuner...which is getting replaced soon anyway. Most of the times when it fails to sleep, if I wait long enough, I get a 0x9F (Device Power State Failure) BSOD.


It seems like I'm forgetting something, but those were the main things. The main goal was to have Media Center be able to wake the computer automatically for scheduled recordings and put it back to sleep - like I used to have working last year.

So after all this time, the board is still going strong...and coincidentally, I just picked up two more 1GB sticks of PC3200 on the forums here - so I'm about to upgrade to 4GB total RAM. I'm pretty sure that I've had in excess of half a dozen different hardware configurations on this board now.

 

[WT]

Synth, if it wasn't for those 2 sticks you just bought, I'd be bugging you to go the AM2CPU route and drop a Black Edition in there !! It looks like my 7950gx2 is having issues, as it was giving me nasty screen corruption last week, so I pulled it and popped a modded 7900GS in there, which works fine. eVGA lifetime warranty has me covered, so I'll tes it in another rig sometime soon.
My board is still running fine, and after scoring two Vista Ultimate DVDs from the Feedback promo, I am debating going to Vista on that rig. Seeing as how XP is bulletproof, I am thinking that adding Vista would be a mistake.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: WT
Synth, if it wasn't for those 2 sticks you just bought, I'd be bugging you to go the AM2CPU route and drop a Black Edition in there !! It looks like my 7950gx2 is having issues, as it was giving me nasty screen corruption last week, so I pulled it and popped a modded 7900GS in there, which works fine. eVGA lifetime warranty has me covered, so I'll tes it in another rig sometime soon.
My board is still running fine, and after scoring two Vista Ultimate DVDs from the Feedback promo, I am debating going to Vista on that rig. Seeing as how XP is bulletproof, I am thinking that adding Vista would be a mistake.

I was seriously considering the AM2CPU route for a little while (given how cheap DDR2 is), but I managed to get the new 2GB for only $45...much cheaper this way.

As for the XP->Vista upgrade, I can certainly understand the desire not to fix something that isn't broken (I'm paranoid about changing anything that may break sleep/resume support now ). But personally, I've been running Vista x64 for a year and a half now on this board and I'd never go back to XP at this point. As long as all your hardware has driver support (mostly a non-issue these days unless you have something old and/or uncommon), you shouldn't have any problems at all.

 

[SilverTrine]

This is my Asrock 939 Dual Sata post-mortem. Really upon reflection this board is a mixed bag.
Obviously the price of this board was phenomenal $67 for a board that allowed me to upgrade my system from an XP 2000 to a then top of the line Athlon 4000 64. Keeping the AGP videocard, my DDR memory, and all peripherals.

The board worked well for a year and a half with little more to complain about than a very rare restart.

The last half year though was plauged with problems. Quite a few restarts. Then the caps started squealing and the board began its death spiral. Performance began to suffer, and my whole system became unstable.

This culminated with my whole system self-destructing. The power supply and motherboard seemed to go out at the same time. I dont know if it was the motherboard or the power supply but they are both dead now. And I tried hooking up a different power supply to the motherboard with no luck. So I tend to think that this has something to do with the motherboard b/c of the squealing caps and hints that it was dying.

Really at the end of the day you get what you pay for and I have determined that I am the type of person who likes premium 3 year warranty boards from names I trust. The board I used prior to this an Aopen Kt400 board is still going strong in a relatives PC and its used every day.

I think I got my money out of this board but I am moving on now to other manufacturers who give at least a 3 year warranty.

 

[SilverTrine]

Actually spoke too soon. The Asrock dual-sata lives!!!!!!! Knock on wood this board is hardy.
It was seemingly out for the count, but like some kind of self-healing cyborg it lives!

 

[SilverTrine]

Hate to clog the airwaves here but I did a brief search for the PCI-E video cards that work without issue with this board. But I didnt find much. I would appreciate if someone could post the more recent cards that are known to work well with this board.

 

[WT]

I would say any Gen1 card would be fine for an Asrock, up to the 8800GT which introduced the problems that you are aware of. The older G80 8800GTS card should work fine, but the 8800GT as well as the 9600GT may be problematic without some software mods:

Xtremesystems link

PC Perspective

The Zotac 8800GTS 320mb card for $99 AR seems like a great card for the Asrock board.

 

[Somniferum]

Originally posted by: WT
I would say any Gen1 card would be fine for an Asrock, up to the 8800GT which introduced the problems that you are aware of. The older G80 8800GTS card should work fine, but the 8800GT as well as the 9600GT may be problematic without some software mods

I've been running an 8800GT with my ASRock 939Dual for about 8 months now with no issues whatsoever. No software mods required. This is the BFG 512Mb OC version.

 

[SilverTrine]

Originally posted by: WT
I would say any Gen1 card would be fine for an Asrock, up to the 8800GT which introduced the problems that you are aware of. The older G80 8800GTS card should work fine, but the 8800GT as well as the 9600GT may be problematic without some software mods:

Xtremesystems link

PC Perspective

The Zotac 8800GTS 320mb card for $99 AR seems like a great card for the Asrock board.

That price seems pretty good, no sense breaking the bank for a card that would get marginal improvements due to my CPU.

Do you have a link for that card?

Also any word on whether the 8800gs works on this motherboard, the price of those is around $100 w/rebate.

Do you think the 8800GTS or the 8800gs is the better card?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Somniferum

Originally posted by: WT
I would say any Gen1 card would be fine for an Asrock, up to the 8800GT which introduced the problems that you are aware of. The older G80 8800GTS card should work fine, but the 8800GT as well as the 9600GT may be problematic without some software mods

I've been running an 8800GT with my ASRock 939Dual for about 8 months now with no issues whatsoever. No software mods required. This is the BFG 512Mb OC version.

I just upgraded to a Gigabyte 8800GT last week myself. I have had a few strange issues (video card resetting and/or a few BSOD's - but only in UT3, and only once in a while), but I assumed it was just Nvidia's drivers. Are these the kind of issues you're talking about, WT? I may have to research this further. Wasn't really planning on upgrading either, but a friend with a dying 6800 wanted to buy my X1900XT...so that was my excuse for buying the 8800GT.

Also, if anyone's interested, I spent more time on my sleep/resume issues and found out that it was CPU overclocking that caused it to be unreliable, not any of the reasons I initially suspected (and listed in an earlier post). Specifically, when I boot with HTT at 200MHz, I could go through 100+ Sleep/Resume cycles without a freeze. So now I have to use SysTool to overclock in Windows (after a boot and/or every resume), but at least it works pretty reliably. Though it has failed a few times since I installed the 8800GT...

 

[Somniferum]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

I just upgraded to a Gigabyte 8800GT last week myself. I have had a few strange issues (video card resetting and/or a few BSOD's - but only in UT3, and only once in a while), but I assumed it was just Nvidia's drivers.

One thing you may want to check is the fan speed. Many of the 8800GTs (like mine) have the 3D fan speed set very low by default (the "Automatic Fan Control" setting), which can cause them to overheat even at stock speeds. On top of that, there's a bug in the Nvidia drivers which causes the "Direct Fan Control" setting to revert back to "Automatic Fan Control" every time you reboot.

I was using RivaTuner to get around that problem, but this week I upgraded to the new 175.16 drivers, hoping they'd finally fixed the bug. Nope! And RivaTuner doesn't work with the new drivers yet either. So for now, I just have to remember to change it back to "Direct Fan Control" and crank up the fan speed every time I reboot.

For me, around 62% fan speed seems to be the optimal balance between cooling and acceptable noise level. I haven't had any BSODs or lockups with that setting. (I'm running the card at stock speeds, not counting the factory OC.)

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Somniferum

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

I just upgraded to a Gigabyte 8800GT last week myself. I have had a few strange issues (video card resetting and/or a few BSOD's - but only in UT3, and only once in a while), but I assumed it was just Nvidia's drivers.

One thing you may want to check is the fan speed. Many of the 8800GTs (like mine) have the 3D fan speed set very low by default (the "Automatic Fan Control" setting), which can cause them to overheat even at stock speeds. On top of that, there's a bug in the Nvidia drivers which causes the "Direct Fan Control" setting to revert back to "Automatic Fan Control" every time you reboot.

I was using RivaTuner to get around that problem, but this week I upgraded to the new 175.16 drivers, hoping they'd finally fixed the bug. Nope! And RivaTuner doesn't work with the new drivers yet either. So for now, I just have to remember to change it back to "Direct Fan Control" and crank up the fan speed every time I reboot.

For me, around 62% fan speed seems to be the optimal balance between cooling and acceptable noise level. I haven't had any BSODs or lockups with that setting. (I'm running the card at stock speeds, not counting the factory OC.)

My understanding is that the cooler on my card has a fixed (i.e., non-adjustable) fan speed. In any case, I don't think I've ever seen it over 65°C in gaming, so I'd be kind of surprised if it were heat-related.

 

[SilverTrine]

For future information it appears that several Asrock boards use PCI-E 1.0 slots and this is where there is some confusion.

The Asrock 939 uses PCI-E 1.0a slots that boards like the 8800gt and the 3870 do work fine with.

I have found several confirmations of this on the web, including here:

Rage3d link about 8800gt and 3870 on Asrock 939 dual sata.

Though there is some indication that there might be a mild performance hit since the Asrock 939 dual sata does not use a PCI-E 2.0 slot.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Thanks for the link. I'm pretty convinced it's Nvidia's drivers causing my (intermittent) problems anyway, I've read about other people having similar issues with the 175 series releases. Maybe I should try an older version...

 

[WT]

Nice find, ST !! That is in fact news to me, and I had read of all the issues that were occurring with the Gen2 cards and wrongly assumed that the Asrock was in fact afflicted with the same issues. You read enough posts on other forums dealing with the same issues and you start to blur fact from reality due to the nature of the web, so that link was indeed a worthwhile read.
I honestly can't see retiring my Asrock board for a loooong time, as it is absolutely bulletproof in its current setup, and is used as workbench PC when I am working on customer PCs. I just wish I could find another one somewhere after missing out on the CompGeeks refurbs.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: WT
Nice find, ST !! That is in fact news to me, and I had read of all the issues that were occurring with the Gen2 cards and wrongly assumed that the Asrock was in fact afflicted with the same issues. You read enough posts on other forums dealing with the same issues and you start to blur fact from reality due to the nature of the web, so that link was indeed a worthwhile read.
I honestly can't see retiring my Asrock board for a loooong time, as it is absolutely bulletproof in its current setup, and is used as workbench PC when I am working on customer PCs. I just wish I could find another one somewhere after missing out on the CompGeeks refurbs.

You may be in luck - there was a post in Hot Deals about the 775Dual-VSTA just a few hours ago. On a hunch I checked to see if the same website had the 939Dual, and lo and behold...they did!

http://3btech.net/as93so939maw.html

Honestly, I'm a little tempted to buy an extra one myself As you may have read above, my recent upgrades on this board include an 8800GT and an additional 2GB of RAM (4GB total now)...It's been 2.5+ years now, I'm not sure if I've ever used any other board this long, lol.

 

[fustercluck]

Hey guys, didn't feel like starting a new thread...

Got an ASrock DualSATA2 but no CPU to use it with (CPU died and I since got a new computer and would like to use the DualSATA2 to build a better computer for my Mother). When the CPU died it scratched up the 939 socket kinda badly in one corner.

From what I can understand this board will support AM2 socket CPUs but only with the purchase of an additional part? Would the AM2 CPU go in a different socket? (that'd be good since the 939 socket is kinda damaged). Will the board support dual core CPUs?

What's a good cheap CPU I can get for this board that'll work? Was looking at these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103231

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103037

Thanks.