MRG
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- Mar 24, 2007
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Greetings all,
As you know, I have the "ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Motherboard" in my current PC & I have to say that I am extremely pleased with the performance it gives me. Yes, I am aware that it is a budget motherboard, but i'm poor so I gotta make do with what I can.
The point of this post though, is not for me to sound like an ad trying to sell you all something. Instead, it's to give those of you with this same motherboard in your systems a better understanding of just how much of a Jem that motherboard actually is. Something I just found out myself.
A friend of mine asked me to build him an extremely cheap system. One that would allow him to use pretty much all of his older hardware, but he wanted a faster CPU, namely the Core 2 Duo. So I told him about the motherboard from ASRock. He liked what he heard, the more so after hearing that I was impressed with the one that was installed in my own system. So I built him a system with an E6300 installed in a 775Dual-VSTA motherboard. I then used his old RAM & Video card, not to mention the opther componets that are in his other computer, like HDD's & Optical drives.
Fast forward several months and I get a PM from him asking me which video cards will work in his motherboard because he is looking to upgrade. So I did a little looking and was very suprised with what I found out. Since the 775Dual-VSTA motherboard has only a 4x PCI-E slot, I naturally was leaning more towards an AGP card. Then I got to thinking, what if he wants to upgrade in a another 6 months time. The AGP card he got today will most likely be obsolete then, the more so because it's AGP.
So I went looking for some info on just how much of a performance hit he would take if he installed a PCI-E video card over another AGP. Needless to say after reading the info I found, I am no longer looking at AGP cards. While it's true that he will take a performance hit, (His motherboard will limit the PCI-E to 4x after all) with what is currently out games wise, the performance hit is not nearly as bad as I had at first assumed it would be. I guess thats what I get for "Assuming".
My brother-in-law has a 7900GT. I already asked him if I can try it in my system and he said I could. I'll run benchmarks "Before" and "After" with the 2 cards and i'll post the info here. I also found out that some users have even tried the 8xxx series of video cards and that they worked, though most said only when using WinVista. Since I have WinXP, i'll be testing with that.
A few of the many reviews out for this motherboard.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/377/14/
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=14
As you know, I have the "ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Motherboard" in my current PC & I have to say that I am extremely pleased with the performance it gives me. Yes, I am aware that it is a budget motherboard, but i'm poor so I gotta make do with what I can.
The point of this post though, is not for me to sound like an ad trying to sell you all something. Instead, it's to give those of you with this same motherboard in your systems a better understanding of just how much of a Jem that motherboard actually is. Something I just found out myself.
A friend of mine asked me to build him an extremely cheap system. One that would allow him to use pretty much all of his older hardware, but he wanted a faster CPU, namely the Core 2 Duo. So I told him about the motherboard from ASRock. He liked what he heard, the more so after hearing that I was impressed with the one that was installed in my own system. So I built him a system with an E6300 installed in a 775Dual-VSTA motherboard. I then used his old RAM & Video card, not to mention the opther componets that are in his other computer, like HDD's & Optical drives.
Fast forward several months and I get a PM from him asking me which video cards will work in his motherboard because he is looking to upgrade. So I did a little looking and was very suprised with what I found out. Since the 775Dual-VSTA motherboard has only a 4x PCI-E slot, I naturally was leaning more towards an AGP card. Then I got to thinking, what if he wants to upgrade in a another 6 months time. The AGP card he got today will most likely be obsolete then, the more so because it's AGP.
So I went looking for some info on just how much of a performance hit he would take if he installed a PCI-E video card over another AGP. Needless to say after reading the info I found, I am no longer looking at AGP cards. While it's true that he will take a performance hit, (His motherboard will limit the PCI-E to 4x after all) with what is currently out games wise, the performance hit is not nearly as bad as I had at first assumed it would be. I guess thats what I get for "Assuming".
My brother-in-law has a 7900GT. I already asked him if I can try it in my system and he said I could. I'll run benchmarks "Before" and "After" with the 2 cards and i'll post the info here. I also found out that some users have even tried the 8xxx series of video cards and that they worked, though most said only when using WinVista. Since I have WinXP, i'll be testing with that.
A few of the many reviews out for this motherboard.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/377/14/
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=14
