|
|
|
Santa Pig
Group: Moderators
Last Login: Yesterday @ 15:06:57
Posts: 10,078,
Visits: 11,039
|
|
September 2008
They just refuse to die 
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? 
From Slipstreem:
Here are some useful links concerning the ASRock Dual-VSTA. They apply equally to the quadcore version.
DDR vs DDR2 performance...
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810
More info on memory performance...
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2813
AGP vs PCI-E performance...
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814
Drivers and BIOS Updates
DUAL http://tinyurl.com/3a7g8s
4Core http://tinyurl.com/2fsewp
Upgrading your Special
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.
Dave R
XP Pro + various VMs: Q6600 @ stock, Asus V3-P5G33, 2GB DDR2 800, 7600GT
XP Pro: E1200 @2.4Ghz, GA-G33M-DS2R/S2, 2GB DDR2 800, 3450 on HDMI
Mandriva S 2008: SOA Athlon 2200, 1GB DDR, 9550
Windows Home Server: S3000, ASUS V2-M2V890, 512mb DDR2 667, 1TB
4GB USB Pendrive: Mandriva 2009 - my portable PC
|
|
|
|