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RE: The "Dave" and "43" Specials

thebymster — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:30:44 GMT

Thanks Slipstream,

I got Mine 2nd hand or something (was so long ago I can't remember) but it's OEM any how. Downloaded and printed PDF manual soon as I got it, thank goodness. have driver to try now. Hope it does something as now ps2 inputs have packed up!! can use usb mouse, but can't get to bios!! ERK!!

Managed to format big new drive too through device manager tool. Hurrah!

tB.

RE: The "Dave" and "43" Specials

Slipstreem — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:50:26 GMT

The drivers you need are provided on a CD with the motherboard. I'm still running the original drivers with WinXP Home with no hitches. If you feel the need to update them then look on the ASRock website for the latest drivers. You will need separate drivers for full functionality. There is no global driver as such. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: The "Dave" and "43" Specials

thebymster — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:16:25 GMT

Hey RiceDQ, I finally got round to building the 'Dave Special' that you so kindly advised me about a year ago... But, of course, I'm having a few problems...

The nastiest is that I can see my big, shinny, new, Deskstar SATA, 320 Gb Hdd in the BIOS, but Windows XP cannot see it anywhere. Yes, I've checked all the connectoins,,, BUT I'll come back to that in another thread, with all the gorry details, later.

What the Immediate problem is; Drivers for MoBo. The Link on this pinned post takes me to page with many drivers, but they seem to be for specific patches to full driver: ie, a driver for audio or one for LAN. Which is the all encompasing, bog standard MoBo driver? Or am I missing a vital point here?

Happy New Year,

The Bymster.

The "Dave" and "43" Specials

ricedg — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:03:43 GMT

[b]September 2008[/b]
They just refuse to die :D

The "Dave Special".
In MM918 I wrote an article "Core 2 Duo on the Cheap".
It was based around using the AS-Rock 775DUAL-VSTA motherboard as a very cost effective way to upgrade any system to Core 2 Duo.

The 775DUAL-VSTA was unique (and it's variants still are) in that it has IDE & SATA, AGP & PCI-e and DDR & DDR2 ram.
Whatever bits you have from an AMDSocket A / 939 or an Intel Socket 478/ older 775 you can reuse them to get C2D performance for (at the time) sub £200.
The board is not a brilliant overclocker, but even despite that C2D's fly and you had an upgrade path for the future.
The idea took off with Forumites and the "Dave Special" was born - courtesy of Wasbit who originally coined the phrase.

The "Dave Special" was therefore an AS-Rock 775DUAL-VSTA with a Conroe Core 2 Duo -usually the E6300 -and all your old drives, gfx cards and ram.

The Latest Special Recommendation.
Time marches on and so have Intel and AS-Rock.
The new motherboard is the £43 AS-Rock4CoreDual-VSTA http://tinyurl.com/2mu4ug
The CPU is the £56 E5200, which runs natively as fast as the old Special when overclocked!

As the name implies, the motherboard will accept Quad Core CPUs, so the future upgrade path is even better.
They can overclock beyond 266mhz, especially with DDR400 (PC3200) ram which most of us have in our old Athlon systems.
Check out the sticky in theOverclockers Forum for Tips and Tweaks - it really is easy.

£99 to upgrade your old Athlon to a rocket machine?
What are you waiting for? :P

From Slipstreem:
Here are some useful links concerning the ASRock Dual-VSTA. They apply equally to the quadcore version.

DDR vs DDR2 performance...
[url]http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810[/url]

More info on memory performance...
[url]http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2813[/url]

AGP vs PCI-E performance...
[url]http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814[/url]

[b]Drivers and BIOS Updates[/b]
[i]DUAL[/i] [url]http://tinyurl.com/3a7g8s[/url]
[i]4Core[/i] [url]http://tinyurl.com/2fsewp[/url]

[b]Upgrading your Special[/b]
Don't forget they only support 2GB of ram and DDR2 667 is the maximum speed.
No reason not to buy DDR2 800 as you'll be able to tighten the timings.
IMO 2GB is enough for 99% of people anyway.
DO NOT buy fancy ram that needs 2,2v as you may have issues.
TBH it's no better than the "normal" stuff.

Graphics card upgrades - we know that the pci-e slot isn't 16x
This presents a problem to NVidia, so seek out ATI cards.
A BIOS uodate is need for the new 38XX cards.

More upgrade tips gratefully received from those that have.

Please post specific technicalquestions about the "Specials" here, but Overclocking questions to the OC Forum please.