ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI: Core 2 Duo goes mATX
by Gary Key on September 1, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
Our test setup is not our normal configuration due to time constraints for generating this early look review. We are using the test configuration from our recent Core 2 Duo memory performance articles since we had a base of information with the E6300 and several competing Intel and VIA based motherboards. Also, this test configuration is well suited for this board's capabilities and would be considered a mainstream solution in regards to the overall system cost. We will have extended test results with this board in our upcoming mATX roundup utilizing additional hardware configurations.
Our configuration was operated at a resolution of 1024x768 with high quality settings for each graphics benchmark. We will have onboard graphics test results with this board in an upcoming G965 versus 945G comparison, although we were only able to complete Quake 4 testing with the Intel GMA950.
We are testing our motherboards at the fastest stable timings we can achieve and still pass our benchmark test suite. By increasing the memory voltage on the ASRock board we were able to run our Transcend modules at 3-3-3-9 at DDR2-533 and 3-4-3-10 at DDR2-667. With these set ratios our CPU speed remains the same at 1.86GHz in the test platform with memory speed being varied by selecting the different ratios. Our memory settings were derived from extensive stress testing with a variety of applications. While certain settings that allowed lower latencies worked well with certain applications, the final settings we arrived at had to work with all applications.
The Sandra bandwidth Unbuffered memory performance of the Intel 945G chipset is the highest of our group at DDR2-533 (1:1 ratio) and second highest at DDR2-667 (4:5 ratio). The Unbuffered scores of the 945G chipset increase by 10% when going from DDR2-533 to DDR2-667 which equals the same increases found on the ASRock 945P. However, both the P965 and 975X scale at a rate of approximately 15%. The buffered memory scores are very competitive with the other solutions but we usually find these scores do not correlate well with real performance in most applications. The 945G scores very well in our SuperPI 2M tests where it ties the NV 570 SLI in the DDR2-533 results and places second in the DDR2-667 test. The latency results are average but improve upon the 945P board. A very good guide to understanding how the chipset, memory, and CPU relate to each other on Intel chipsets is located here.
Our test setup is not our normal configuration due to time constraints for generating this early look review. We are using the test configuration from our recent Core 2 Duo memory performance articles since we had a base of information with the E6300 and several competing Intel and VIA based motherboards. Also, this test configuration is well suited for this board's capabilities and would be considered a mainstream solution in regards to the overall system cost. We will have extended test results with this board in our upcoming mATX roundup utilizing additional hardware configurations.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo - E6300 |
| RAM: | 2 x 512mb Transcend JetRam DDR2-533 |
| Hard Drive(s): | 1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB |
| System Platform Drivers: | Intel Chipset Software - 8.0.1.1002 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x EVGA 7600GS (PCI Express) |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 91.31 WHQL |
| Cooling: | Scythe Infinity |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXStream 700w |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (VIA PT880Pro) ASRock ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 (Intel 945P) Biostar TForce 965 Deluxe (Intel P965) DFI Infinity 975X/G (Intel P975X) Asus P5NSLI (NVIDIA 570SLI) |
Our configuration was operated at a resolution of 1024x768 with high quality settings for each graphics benchmark. We will have onboard graphics test results with this board in an upcoming G965 versus 945G comparison, although we were only able to complete Quake 4 testing with the Intel GMA950.
We are testing our motherboards at the fastest stable timings we can achieve and still pass our benchmark test suite. By increasing the memory voltage on the ASRock board we were able to run our Transcend modules at 3-3-3-9 at DDR2-533 and 3-4-3-10 at DDR2-667. With these set ratios our CPU speed remains the same at 1.86GHz in the test platform with memory speed being varied by selecting the different ratios. Our memory settings were derived from extensive stress testing with a variety of applications. While certain settings that allowed lower latencies worked well with certain applications, the final settings we arrived at had to work with all applications.
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| Click to enlarge |
The Sandra bandwidth Unbuffered memory performance of the Intel 945G chipset is the highest of our group at DDR2-533 (1:1 ratio) and second highest at DDR2-667 (4:5 ratio). The Unbuffered scores of the 945G chipset increase by 10% when going from DDR2-533 to DDR2-667 which equals the same increases found on the ASRock 945P. However, both the P965 and 975X scale at a rate of approximately 15%. The buffered memory scores are very competitive with the other solutions but we usually find these scores do not correlate well with real performance in most applications. The 945G scores very well in our SuperPI 2M tests where it ties the NV 570 SLI in the DDR2-533 results and places second in the DDR2-667 test. The latency results are average but improve upon the 945P board. A very good guide to understanding how the chipset, memory, and CPU relate to each other on Intel chipsets is located here.
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passport - Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - link
With this board in order to overclock higher than 299 you either have to do the CPU,PCIE Sync which will allow you to go up to about 130-320 before you knacker your SATA drives or you can set it to CPU,PCIE Async; set PCIE to 117 (no effect on system) and then you are able to go up to 350 (runs a 6400 @ 2.8 gHZ). Don't forget that at these speeds you are also overclocking your memory so open up the timings before you try it.RomanMtz - Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - link
Hello... I plan on using this budget board as a transition board until the Lanparty series for Conroe is released or more OCing board options arise. My only concern is that, while I will probably use it stock with a E6600, I want to make sure my Geforce 7950GX2 fits in it. I read the Epox 945 MATX review on Hard and they mentioned that that card did not physically fit in that board. Any comments about this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!deathwalker - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
Are the overclocking shortcommings of this board (cpu core vlt/memory vlt)correctable thru possible future bios updates?JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
Possibly, but I wouldn't count on ASRock making the changes. Most of their boards have the same BIOS limitations and have for a while now. :|deathwalker - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
I sure home ASUS gets there P5B-VM to the market place soon. I want to get my hand on a good MicroAtx Core 2 Duo board so I can upgrade my Ultra Fly SFF system.roman2 - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 - link
I have bought a pretty similar board recently - Asus P5LD2-VM SE. It is a stripped-down board, but for a real bargain. I also have Core2 E6400 (8x, 2.13GHz, step.B2) and 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 675MHz-CL4.I've been trying to overclock this configuration and was able to reach 297 MHz FSB stable (2.37GHz CPU, 742MHz 4-4-4-12 memory, both stock voltage). The board has quite good CPU/memory voltage setting capabilities, but I wasn't able to post after 299 MHz. Any suggestions?
What is the best memory timing for these Corsair modules at such a high frequency?
What is the maximum safe voltage for CPU and what for the memory? (I didn't try to push the voltage much higher to not destroy the thing).
I have the board for a month now, for a month overclocked and must say it was worth it. But if I could achieve even higher overclock, it would be really nice :-)
PotatoMAN - Sunday, September 3, 2006 - link
Thanks again AT. I always enjoy reading your articles and they usually have most of what I am looking for. Like others before my post, I too want to see power consumption. I am looking for a solution to put in my car as I will be fabricating a carputer in the coming months. Seeing as how I expect the Core Duo to last, and I don't want to upgrade my carputer for years to come, this probably will be the solution pending the power consumption of the mainboard coupled with the CPU. It would be nice to get some comparison along with the Centrino line processors, as well =)kmmatney - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Although the DVI riser card is a great idea (and gives the the possibility of dual monitors) it seems like the sensible thing to do would be to have a DVI connector as the standard on-board connector. You can always use a DVI-to-VGA adapter if necessary, and those must be cheaper than the riser card. Anybody with enough cash to go dual-screen can buy another cheap card, or better yet, a card with dual DVI output.agent2099 - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
I know most of us interested in mATX boards are especially interested if a board includes two particular things:Component video output (for onboard video)
SPDIF audio output
Future roundups should include whether or not a board has these features.
yyrkoon - Friday, September 1, 2006 - link
Well, owning an Asrock motherboard I feel compelled to speak up on the subject. While my motherboard is an Asrock AM2NF4G-SATA2, I have a feeling the feature set (minus the DVI card) is probably pretty much the same. After one months times of owning this board, I would have to say that it is a well thought out board in most respects.However, that being said, there is a few things of concern relating to this board as well.1) As stated in this article, The Asrock AM2NF4G-SATA also has limited memory, and vcore adjustments, which is probably to be expected in a budget motherboard. I was however able to eek out a 16% OC by dropping the multiplier to 11x, and raising the HT to 250MHZ. Raising it any higher caused system instabilities. Dropping the multiplier further resulted in a lower OC, which I felt wasnt worth the time playing around with.
2) Setting up a SATA as the boot disk on these motherboards seems to be borderline un-exceptable. First, you must go into the BIOS, and change the SATA operation mode to [RAID], enter into the RAID BIOS utility, identify, and set the drive as a 'spanning' (JBOD) array, and THEN either have a driver slipstreamed copy of XP, or have a floppy attached. To make matters worse, these steps are not in the manual, and after talking to technical support on the phone (email technical support is shyte, until you get an actual email address from a rep), it took me several hours of trial and error, to figure out the proceedure. Another thing to note, is that these steps must be followed if you expect to run XP setup with a SATA attached period, whether its the boot disk, or not, otherwise you'll have to disconnect the drive, and re-attach it afterwords.
3) Stability seems to be an issue on this system, although, this could be attributed to software, I'm still trying to iron out the details (yes, after a month). Its hard tracing the problem since the system seems to randomly reboot, once every 2-3 days, and its a hard reboot, with no BSoD. I suppose this problem COULD be related to another peice of hardware, I'll have to figure that out.
Anyhow, I would like to know if the problems (except for #1) I've experienced with my motherboard, hold true for this motherboard as well. I would like to add, that for the price, this motherboard is probably well worth it, once you get used to the odd behavior, and realize that this motherboard wont OC very well (should be known to begin with anyhow), it could prove to be a decent motherboard. I'll just have to keep testing the stability issues of my own, and on a clean XP Pro install, so far (in about 18 hours) no random reboots.