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Originally Posted by StepsAscend the 8237 southbridge is outdated I'd say. Why make anything with Sata 1 now? Nice idea to make the most flexible motherboard ever but I think everyone agrees AGP is dead, and DDR1 is out of style.

Yeah, obviously this board is not the ideal board for overclocking, or for Conroe, but I think people seem to be missing the point a bit.

This board is not supposed to be paradigm of the best board for Conroe, it's simply the only board that offers an inexpensive upgrade solution for those who want Conroe, but still have DDR1/AGP technology on their current boards and cannot, necessarily, afford to upgrade almost everything, just to get a newer CPU.

A lot of people on this forum upgrade frequently enough for this board to be useless to them, as they will already have PCI-E and DDR2, if not a Conroe compatible board as well. However, outside of enthusiast forums like o/c.net, there are a heck of a lot of people who are still running DDR1/AGP boards. Not everybody chooses to upgrade every time something new comes out and some can't afford to. For some of the people who know about Conroe, but are still running DDR1/AGP, the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA provides a quick and cheap leap in CPU power (vs P4's etc) but doesn't cost much and doesn't force you to upgrade the rest of your system.

Later on in time other upgrades can be made, but you still get the benefit of Conroe all of the time, because you got that first.

The ASRock 775Dual-VSTA is definitely a budget board, but it's only really going to be people on a budget who buy it, so for those people, like me, it's a good buy for the immediate future.

Highly-Annoyed

 

That's true, as always, there's a market for everything.

Has anyone run benchmarks with conroe on DDR1? Is it still pretty darn fast?

Huge props to ASRock for cramming so much compatibility onto a single board. Very cool indeed.

 

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Originally Posted by StepsAscend That's true, but I just think if you're eager enough to upgrade to conroe, you are probably the kind of person who already has or is willing to buy DDR2 and PCIe graphics.

LOL, I must be unintentionally non-conformist then, because I don't fit that archetype

.

Highly-Annoyed

 

I retracted that statement hihgly-annoyed, because I realized, I kind of fit that description as well. i'm on ddr1 and agp. ah well.

Oh but i did just notice that the pcie graphics slot on that board only runs 4x. That seems kind of problematic.

Via and ASRock don't specify it. But HardwareZone said it in their review
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...998&cid=6&pg=2

 

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Originally Posted by StepsAscend I retracted that statement hihgly-annoyed, because I realized, I kind of fit that description as well. i'm on ddr1 and agp. ah well. Oh but i did just notice that the pcie graphics slot on that board only runs 4x. That seems kind of problematic.

Oh, OK, didn't realise that. Yeah, a lot of people are still on DDR1 and AGP. Outside of the enthusiast forums like o/c.net there are loads of DDR1/AGP systems and some of their owners might only be able to afford (or want) the Conroe CPU, without all the cost of a complete upgrade.

The 775Dual-VSTA isn't the best board for Conroe (or overclocking), but it does (as you said) have a market and it's a very flexible board. I'd rather have a fully upgraded system, with the latest of everything, but I can't afford to spend £600+ ($1,125+ USD) on a full upgrade to a Conroe system. The budget ASRock board meets my immediate needs and allows me to upgrade to Conroe for £200 ($375 USD), instead of £600+ ($1,125+ USD). It should appeal to a lot of people in my position, who also want access to Conroe, on a budget.

Highly-Annoyed

 

Well i may be going that way if i dont get any extra money.