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

[touchmyichi]

review up, looks awesome
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524

 

[Fam Money]

It does seem like a great board. This review makes me feel a little better about ordering it now.

Hopefully ASRock takes everyone's advice and starts making better BIOS' for it.

 

[StrangerGuy]

This thing is just too perfect...Really good OCer (300+ HTT), AGP 8x, PCI-E 16x, and at such a low price!

 

[Killrose]

This board is pretty amazing especially when considering ASRock is stricktly a budget spin-off of Asus. This Uli chipset is truely amazing and I hope the enthusiast board builders have the balls to get off their SLi High Horse and build us an even better board.

 

[MasterAndCommander]

Hmm...my ECS K75A seems to be on it's way out...perhaps this is the replacement I'm looking for...along with a new 939 processor of course.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
This thing is just too perfect...Really good OCer (300+ HTT), AGP 8x, PCI-E 16x, and at such a low price!

I agree. I just read AT's review of it (and was surprised to see my old thread about it in the "latest motherboard forum posts" section ).

Looks great, and overclocking appears to be very adequate (at least for 90nm CPU's, which is all I'd buy at this point anyway). I'll definitely be picking one of these up within the next month or two. Barely more than 1/2 what I paid for my last motherboard...

 

[swaq]

If only it had firewire... Looks good though.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
That alone would make a very compelling motherboard in my eyes, but the possibility of upgrading to Socket M2 in the future makes it even more so. As far as I can tell by doing a few quick searches, the upgrade cards (for example, a Socket 939 card for an older 754 motherboard) cost about $30...very inexpensive upgrade path. Also, their older motherboards with these upgrade cards seem to do well in benchmarks too.

Will there be any motherboards with AGP for socket M2? If not, this board can be the saviour of people who sprung for a high end AGP card like a friend of mine who got an AGP x850XTPE.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
That alone would make a very compelling motherboard in my eyes, but the possibility of upgrading to Socket M2 in the future makes it even more so. As far as I can tell by doing a few quick searches, the upgrade cards (for example, a Socket 939 card for an older 754 motherboard) cost about $30...very inexpensive upgrade path. Also, their older motherboards with these upgrade cards seem to do well in benchmarks too.

Will there be any motherboards with AGP for socket M2? If not, this board can be the saviour of people who sprung for a high end AGP card like a friend of mine who got an AGP x850XTPE.

I have no clue really...I guess it depends on when M2 boards actually start appearing. But given that the latest Nvidia and ATI S939 chipsets already have left AGP out, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't many other M2 boards with AGP when the time comes...

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: swaq
If only it had firewire... Looks good though.

Yeah, I agree firewire would have been nice...but I guess you can't expect too much from a $65 board.

(I've actually never once used the firewire ports on my current motherboard of two years...as long as USB2.0 is solid, which it seems to be, that works for me )

Originally posted by: flashbacck
has there been any talk about how good the M2 future CPU socket thing will be? I mean, the expectation is that the M2 socket will be fully functional and not handicapped in any way, right?

There hasn't been necessarily much talk about the M2 slot/card as far as I can tell (mainly because it's still somewhat off in the future), but based on what I saw of older ASRock solutions (939 riser cards for 754 boards, etc.), it seems to be a fully functional solution.

 

[Killrose]

I like this chipset and am tempted to move into A64 from my OC'ed Barton Mobile, but if I do i'm going to have to buy another WinXP because of thier new on-line activation policy (OEM Dell in use here) which blows because it will add another $90 to any up-grade I make.

That extra cost sorta ruins the price performance ratio for any gains I might get with my AGP 6800 Ultra. I may just wait for a real M2 socket and hpefully an AGP slot to go with it.

 

[Rage187]

Picked one up w/ a dual core 3800, total cost was less then $450. Cheap upgrade since I can keep my ram and video card.

 

[imported_Woody]

To those of you who purchased one of these boards....please keep us posted on the experience. At $68 I'm very tempted to go out and buy one.

If something better comes along that I feel I must have it's not a huge lost investment. The real problem with replacing a mobo is you basically have to build the entire computer all over again.

I have a really good AGP card that I want to keep so I'm not even considering any NF4 boards. This board offers tremendous upgrade possibilities and it's something you could be running in a cutting edge system for several years.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
There hasn't been necessarily much talk about the M2 slot/card as far as I can tell (mainly because it's still somewhat off in the future), but based on what I saw of older ASRock solutions (939 riser cards for 754 boards, etc.), it seems to be a fully functional solution.

That gets me thinking... If that CPU slot can house an M2 riser, can't it also house a s754 riser? If the riser card is cheap enough, this can be a single board that supports s754, s939, sM2, AGP 8X, PCIe 16X. You can start with a cheap $60 Sempron and your old AGP video card, and upgrade to your hearts content.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
There hasn't been necessarily much talk about the M2 slot/card as far as I can tell (mainly because it's still somewhat off in the future), but based on what I saw of older ASRock solutions (939 riser cards for 754 boards, etc.), it seems to be a fully functional solution.

That gets me thinking... If that CPU slot can house an M2 riser, can't it also house a s754 riser? If the riser card is cheap enough, this can be a single board that supports s754, s939, sM2, AGP 8X, PCIe 16X. You can start with a cheap $60 Sempron and your old AGP video card, and upgrade to your hearts content.

I never even thought about that. I wonder if any of their 754 riser cards (I know there was at least one for a similar upgradable 462 board in the past) use the same slot format... I'll have to look more into that just out of curiosity. I wouldn't really be interested in one myself (I'd be buying either a 939 Venice or X2 to start out with), but the question is definitely interesting.

Imagine my surprise when I came back to this thread (that I created two months ago) and saw that it had 1800+ views...I'm glad that people are interested in it though, it's a very unique board at a great price point. I'd buy it right now if I could decide which CPU I want (and/or can afford ).

Edit: And the riser cards seem to be available for right around $30, which IMO makes them a great value. I won't necessarily be jumping on the M2 bandwagon initially (depends on the price/performance, not to mention I'd have to replace my RAM), but it's nice to have the option.

 

[Killrose]

So M2 will only support DDR2? I thought AMD was poo ppo'ing DDR2.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Killrose
So M2 will only support DDR2? I thought AMD was poo ppo'ing DDR2.

Last I'd heard, yeah, M2 is DDR2 only. It's still many months from release though.

I was looking at current RAM prices a week or two ago on Newegg, and I was shocked to find that DDR2 is starting to be as inexpensive as (and even cheaper than, in some cases) DDR. That doesn't help any of us who have a large amount (1GB+) of regular DDR that we don't want to throw away, but at least prices are coming down. And maybe AMD thinks that the benefits of DDR2 outweigh the disadvantages once it gets to a certain price/performance point. And I'm sure it'll get better in the coming months too, since as far as I know all new Intel platforms are using DDR2.

 

[videogames101]

Ok i NEED to know, if i want to out my 9800 pro AND buy a nice ati PCIe card do they work together?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: videogames101
Ok i NEED to know, if i want to out my 9800 pro AND buy a nice ati PCIe card do they work together?

Yes, that should work - it's one of the features they're advertising.

 

[Killrose]

Originally posted by: videogames101
Ok i NEED to know, if i want to out my 9800 pro AND buy a nice ati PCIe card do they work together?

For a "Dual monitor" config, yes I believe so, but not as some sort of budget SLi/Crossfire on one monitor.

 

[videogames101]

ok...... could someone explain more? will it work with 1 moniter? i'm not really a tech guy.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: videogames101
ok...... could someone explain more? will it work with 1 moniter? i'm not really a tech guy.

I'm not sure why you'd want to run two video cards if you're only using one monitor, unless you want an SLI-like configuration (which as mentioned, isn't going to work). Can you perhaps explain a little better exactly what it is that you're wanting to do?

 

[FirNaTine]

I am still waiting on UPS to deliver my board, has anyone else gotten one up and running here yet?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: FirNaTine
I am still waiting on UPS to deliver my board, has anyone else gotten one up and running here yet?

From a quick glance at the rest of the thread it doesn't seem like it yet, but I'm sure others will be soon. I'll be getting one as soon as I can figure out which CPU to get with it.

Damn, I just looked at Newegg and it's out of stock there again. It was in stock for a few hours earlier though. Maybe there were more people waiting for this board than I thought. :Q

 

[imported_Woody]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
I'll be getting one as soon as I can figure out which CPU to get with it.

I'm thinking a San Diego 3700, it's at a very nice price/performance point and offers some clockability. I'd like an X2 but without application support (apps that I use that is) there is little point to justify the expense. It's not like I need a dedicated core to run Xfire when I'm playing BF2. Next summer it will be cheap enough to drop a very fast X2 in there.