Trying to Find AGP & PCI-E dual board

[Soulspring]

Anybody know of a 775 motherboard with dual graphics controllers to replace my useless PCchips one. I need Dual as i have a great little BFG agp card that i dont want to replace yet however when i do replace it i will obviously go for PCI-E.


Reason for replacing PCchips board is due to:

a) its rubbish
b) try putting to mem sticks in... good luck. even if they are identical it will see both but always conflict.
c) SATA controller makes HD fall over constantly and no diagnostics can find problem with HD


ANY help on above welcomed

[wonderlust]

Hello and Welcome to the forum

I don't think there was ever a 775 board that offered both a full AGP x8 and a full PCI-E x16 port. (There were boards for AMD chips though...)

Those board that were available are few (With either restriced PCI-E or restricted AGP) and far between, even 2nd hand.

What graphics card is it that you are using at the moment?

[Soulspring]

Currently using

BFG 7800 GS OC almost as much as you can squeeze from AGP 8x :lol:

[wonderlust]

well 7800Gs seem to sell on fleabay for between £40 and £80 (why?!!!!)

For that money you could pick up something like an 9500GT or similar in PCI-E. For a little more a 9600GT (from £70+vat)

That way you could get a board that is PCI-E only and not restrict yourself to a hybrid board.

[Soulspring]

:) True ... Guess its been a while (year and a half) since getting the 7800. Guess things have come down a little since. About time i let the moths out the wallet. Thanks for help

ooi; is it likely to be motherboard causing HD to fall over. It occasionally hard resets during heavy HD use. And as previously mentioned using Active Smart no probs reported with HD

Also if you could reccommend a descent replacement to PCchips P23g V3 that will be easy for novice to install would be really helpful.

[wonderlust]

Have you tried another Sata Cable?

I have just had nightmares sorting out an HDD issue

http://forums.aria.co.uk/showpost.php?p=60570&postcount=96

turned out to be a faulty sata cable,

what chipset / HDD?

[Soulspring]

Maxtor STM3250820AS HD

not sure on chipset

Havent tried diff cable... defo worth a try :)

[wonderlust]

Ok, do you know the model of your motherboard?

The drive is a Sata 300 drive, some early sata boards had issues with Maxtor drives for some reasons, but this drive appears not to be very old.

depending on the chipset (Everest or CPu-Z may give you this info) you may have to drop the sata speed from 300 to 150 for better reliablity

[chatters]

Asrock used to do this board, aria used to sell it. But they dont anymore, you might be able to find it on fleabay :)

Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA 775

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4COREDUAL-VSTA

[wonderlust]

Asrock used to do this board, aria used to sell it. But they dont anymore, you might be able to find it on fleabay :)

Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA 775

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4COREDUAL-VSTA

Yeah, but as I stated above the PCI-E is resticted to X4 so any new card in the future would be bottlenecked.

[Soulspring]

Current mobo is pcchips 23g v3... trying to download everest to get more info for you

[Soulspring]

chipset is VIA P4M800 Pro

[wonderlust]

ok, Via P4m800pro chipset

http://www.pcchips.com.tw/PCCWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?DetailID=387&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=44&LanID=0

I would highly reccomend setting the Maxtor to run at sata 150, The Sata on this board is Sata 150, Via Sata 150 chipsets a known to have issues with Sata 300 drives.

To set the drive in Sata 150 mode see

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/maxtor/100451230c.pdf

section 3.2

[Soulspring]

Will give it a go. Thanks again for all your help


Speak again

[wonderlust]

No probs, it's one of the things the Forums for... :D

[chatters]

Yeah, but as I stated above the PCI-E is resticted to X4 so any new card in the future would be bottlenecked.

True :)

[wonderlust]

It makes more sense to keep the board he has, if the sata issues are cured, and get another board and graphics card at a later date, perhaps even a Nehalem based system later this year or early next year (or if the 775 prices plummet a bargain budget 775 system:D)

If he gets a good price for his 7800GS then the cost of upgrading to a 9xxx series or an AMD (ATI) equivalent will be fairly small.

It's a shame that Asrock couldn't find a way to get a board like the 939Dual-sata2 for Intel chips, maybe a hybrid like an Nvidia AGP northbridge (iirc nvidia used HT for the intel interconnect but i could be very wrong on that) with the ULI southbridge...

[Lynx]

get an intel dual core vista, ironically to use AGP you cant use vista on it, but can use DDR1 and AGP then get DDR2 and PCI-e.

[wonderlust]

get an intel dual core vista, ironically to use AGP you cant use vista on it, but can use DDR1 and AGP then get DDR2 and PCI-e.

does that have full speed PCI-E? (can't find it on Asrock's site, assuming it's one of theirs)

He already has DDR2

[Lynx]

I dont know probably 8 speed.

[wonderlust]

is it the 775dual-vista?
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA&s=n

still only PCI-E x4...

[Soulspring]

Having searched for hours to find a spare jumper i found that the maxtor is already restricted :).


However, ordering new lead (if aria ever lets me to checkout) and try that. If not i can only assume that its the controller.

Sounds like a good idea to wait towards end of year to upgrade if needs be though.

will keep you posted of course.

[wonderlust]

It would show as restricted as your boards controller is only sata 150.

Or do you mean the jumper was already there? :D

[Soulspring]

Jumper was already there :)

[wonderlust]

Ah ok, well if it still plays up after changing the cable, If you're not ready to upgrade fully you may want to look into a PCI Sata card.

[Krigo]

If you're interested in a good PCI-E card. I would say to go with the 9600GT, no problems yet and I have yet to find something it has problems with.

[Soulspring]

Ah ok, well if it still plays up after changing the cable, If you're not ready to upgrade fully you may want to look into a PCI Sata card.


Mmmm good cheap option thanks.

[wonderlust]

If you do have to/decide to take that option, I would suggest a card based on a silicon image chipset, I have had good success with them.

[Soulspring]

Can u suggest one ?

[wonderlust]

Aria only do one

7730

jon can you find out what chipset it is?

[jonwoad]

we have 2 on that stock code, one is ALi and the other is VIA

[wonderlust]

Cheers Jon.

Soulspring, personally I would avoid the Via as you are already having issues with the Via controller on your motherboard.

Ali (renamed Uli then bought by Nvidia) made some good products in recent years (Asrocks Legendary 939Daul-Sata2 motherboard was a Uli chipset, as were a couple of the others, I have had ne issues with the built in Uli Sata controllers)

[Soulspring]

Having used the sis sandra benchmark; all aspects of pc are pretty much up to sctratch except HDD which is running at about 10% of what is should, about 3.3 MB/s

:sad:

[wonderlust]

what mode is the controller working at?

(Device manager and properties of the primary and/or secondary controller)

[Soulspring]

DMA if available ?

Auto detection.

Is this what you mean ?

[Soulspring]

Sorry its currently in Ultra DMA 2

[wonderlust]

ok, is that the optical drive or the HDD?

[Soulspring]

Primary IDE.

I am presuming that HDD is on that

Secondary IDE is running on PIO

I have two entries in Device Man for both Primary and secondary. Normal ?!?

[wonderlust]

you can change the view to connected devices,

I wouldn't be surprised to if you find that it's your hdd thats in pio mode, that would explain the issues and slow performance.

(the issues will casue windows to drop to pio mode.)

[Soulspring]

Yep Maxtor is on secondary and thats in PIO.

[wonderlust]

shut down and stick it on another sata connector and reboot, this should put it back to udma4/5/6 depending on the drive and your hardware.

[Soulspring]

Got Lead... after only 2 mins testing seems more stable but cant get HDD to revert to DMA to test properly. Have tried what you said above.

[wonderlust]

ok, you may have to force change the driver for the controller to standard IDE and then re-install the chipset driver...

[Soulspring]

Forget that lead is not the sololution..... trying controller next....

If i order 7750 can i confirm that i will not get the VIA chipset

sorry 7730

[wonderlust]

You will have to wait for jon to reply, and that may not be until tomorrow AM

[Soulspring]

You will have to wait for jon to reply, and that may not be until tomorrow AM


No problem.....

Status at the moment.. forced HDD back into Udma 6 and most things are blisteringly quick and stable.. specific things however are still bringing up old problem of HDD falling over.


1) World of warcraft, at specific times, seems to be loading textures.

2) other heavy gpu usage

[wonderlust]

what psu are you running?

[Soulspring]

Core2Duo E6400
Only 1GB DDR2 as in previous post running 2 sticks even if identicle causes conflicts, blue screens and crashes. Memtest pulls up all sorts of errors

In the past a full re-install of xp has solved the problem for a limited time and then all of a sudden it re-appears, however, on the last try it failed to solve the problem at all.

[wonderlust]

PSU = power supply.

It's a shame you game, other wise I would have recommended one of Aria's cheap Asrock Boards, Asrock are a budget maker like PC chips but the qualtiy of Asrock's boards is approaching the mid range manufacturers (imo)

A board like the Wolfdale1333-d667 33229 is cheap at under £30 has onboard graphics but you can add a pci-e card later. It's not a lot more than buying a pci sata card in reality, and as the chipset is intel there shouldn't be much in a way of compatibility issues.

but as you play games this may not be such a good option

[Soulspring]

Sorry :) PSU = 450w switching

To be honest my main usage is WOW and Graphics rendering, hence why 50% of my usage not working is very frustrating.

[wonderlust]

I can quess, what make is the power supply?

it seems strange that imo the problems start when your system is drawing most current, ie when running the GPU playing games.

[Soulspring]

From the Label Manufacturer seems to be WIN POWER !?!

[wonderlust]

hmm would I be correct in assuming that it came with the case?

[Soulspring]

Its also strange tho that it used to be fine for a couple of months and then re-occur. It was almost as if when i used a certain part of HDD it had trouble reading it. it usually occured with the installation of a new program etc, but chkdsk full comes up with no bad sectors and having installed raw installation of just xp and WOW problem is still there

[Soulspring]

Yes came with case

[wonderlust]

have you tried the disk manufacturers diagnostics?

[Soulspring]

Power supple sounds interesting tho as obviously the overclocked 7800 AGP card has its own feed from PSU, and no doubt drains a fair bit, but enough to cause the HDD to fall over !?! and why would it run fine for so long periods in the past ?

[Soulspring]

Have used maxtor tools.. no probs detected

[wonderlust]

Power supple sounds interesting tho as obviously the overclocked 7800 AGP card has its own feed from PSU, and no doubt drains a fair bit, but enough to cause the HDD to fall over !?! and why would it run fine for so long periods in the past ?

pass, but the GPU will draw mainly on the 12v line, this is shared between all components of the PC, the HDD motor and maybe the servo motor for the head i would guess would be 12v rather than 5V

[Soulspring]

True but how to test? bigger PSU ?

[wonderlust]

it doesn't need to be a bigger psu, probably just a better quality one, where abouts in the uk are you?

[Soulspring]

Frome, Somerset at the moment

[wonderlust]

have you another PC you can swap the psu in?

[Soulspring]

Hmm not at the mo and my old one is probably not up to the job on a 12y/o P3

Could try disconnecting power to 7800 for a few mins just to test WOW. Im guessing only running fan that it can survive without for couple of mins

[wonderlust]

I wouldn't recommend doing that I dont know what would happen

[Soulspring]

Then its down to local shop for a try or buy PSU i guess.. pain in the **** :) Still concerned that it ran fine for so long on the same PSU stress. Still tempted to blame MOBO with all its mem probs in the past.

[wonderlust]

yeah, i know what you mean, it's a difficult situation to know what to do for the best.

[Soulspring]

Again thx for all the help.. might well try controller first. Will wait for reply from Jon.. Will keep you posted :)

[wonderlust]

no probs.

[jonwoad]

you would have to phone telesales and state specifically which one you want as it doesnt state on the paperwork and the pickers could pick either card i'm afraid

[wonderlust]

cheers jon.

[jonwoad]

no probs :)