ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 Ultra ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This is a great mobo, this is exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to move on out of my athlon xp 3200+ but didnt have sata drives, ddr2 or pcie. This board allowed me to do conroe 2 duo with ddr1 and AGP. And for 60 dollars I can't complain much!!!

Cons: Unfortunately the board has 2 slight flaws. Firstly BE AWARE THAT THE PCIE IS ONLY 4X but will accept any PCIE 16x cards. However reviews of the board show that the difference between 4X and 16X these days is pretty minimal (less than a few %). This is because most PCIE don't use the 16x speed anyhow. The second problem is that the board isn't very overclockable. Although the bus can go up to 340mhz, it can only run 290 from my stock 266.

Pros: I've had this board for about 3 months now. It's ran flawlessly. Passed all tests I threw at it.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: I migrated over from an old single core AMD setup. I did not want to buy new ram or a new video card yet, but did want to upgrade to a multi-core setup. This motherboard saved me a ton of money, by allowing me to reuse my old but still good 2GB Mushkin DDR ram and my 6800 AGP video card. Now I have an easy upgrade path for when I want to move to a PCI-E vid card or upgrade my RAM.

Pros: Upgraded 4 systems in one day using this board. Price. Extremely easy install. Effortless overclock of C2D E4400 to 2.66GHz @ stock voltage on all 4 systems. No compatibility issues with any of the hardware used on this board. Allowed re-use of AGP cards that were still quite adequate, with a future path to PCI-E available without having to upgrade mobo at the same time. On-board sound is quite good. Mature mobo drivers. C2Q compatible. AGP 8x/PCI-E. DDR or DDR2. Systems have been very stable. I'm really pleased with this mobo, while not an enthusiast level product, it meets it's intended purpose and then some. As always, well packed and quick service from Newegg.

Cons: Documentation was adequate, but a little on the sparse side for "the average Joe". Only one case fan header. Location of the floppy header is quite a stretch for the average mid-tower ATX case. Only 2 DIMM sockets (for either DDR or DDR2) limits you to a max of 2GB of either type of RAM. SATA is only 1.5Gbps (not that big of a deal though). PCI-E slot is a physical x16, but only an electrical x4 (DX10 mid-upper to high level graphics card will result in approximately 5-15% decrease in performance). Really insignificant cons for the price and what this product is intended for.

Overall Review: Recently purchased 4 of these to upgrade wife's and kids' PCs. Decided to go with 2GB Corsair DDR2-675 and E4400 on all of them. All using previous AGP cards (1 VisionTek X1950 Pro, 1 ATI X1600 Pro and 2 Sapphire X800 XLs). Upgraded 2 Athlon XP 2600+/nForce 2 (Chaintech 7NJL1) based rigs that only required a boot of XP into safe mode to uninstall the nVidia drivers and detect new hardware. Other 2 systems were an Intel 848P/Celeron 3.0GHz (QDI P2PE/800 Pro) and Intel 845/P4 2.53GHz (Asus P4PE), both required a repair install of XP, as they would not boot past AGP440.sys in any mode. Everyone is happy with their "new" systems, as am I (<$250 per system for mobo/CPU/RAM for a very competent PC that games rather well for the kids with the X1950 and X800s, and makes short work of everything my wife throws at hers).

Pros: 2 Types of RAM, 1066Mhx FSB, Quad-COre compatibility, This board gives you the abitlity to do a "semi-upgradable". Read Cons to see why I call it "semi".

Cons: PCIE IS NOT 16X!!! I emailed ASROCK and they told me, "PCIE slot is 4X"!! The company webstie only said"PCI Express. Newegg says "1 x PCI Express Graphics slot" in the "PCI Express x16" column. I'm VERY Upset. I thought I would be able to upgrade the video card in the future. BEWARE!!! I got swindled by somebody!!

Overall Review: I dont know where the other reviews got their information. I was told by ASROCK email support.

Pros: Easy to set-up, plenty of room on the board. Running a CeleronD 331 until the C2D prices drop a little more (September). The best part about this board is it's flexibility and the reasonble price you pay for it. As I stated, I am currently happily running a $36 processor and can upgrade to a 4-core processor as my budget allows. Accepts AGP or PCIe, so I am running an older AGP card w/o any problems until I find a deal on a PCIe, at which time it will support both cards in simultaneous operation. I've had no errors BSOD or any other issues installingany hardware OS (Win2000pro) or software.

Cons: None yet.

Overall Review: Awsome deal for someone looking to upgrade...as your budget allows.

Pros: Ive owned the 775dual-vsta with same type cpu.this board is more stable .allows higher overclocks beyond the 300fsb barrier that plagued the previous board.Is this the chipset being certified Ultra vs the older pro/ultra rating? not sure.this 4core version maxes at 310fsb with a c2duo 6400 for 2.49gig speed.wont go beyond post at 311fsb,yet rock solid below at 310. 300 fsb is a walk in the park.my 775dual-vsta struggled to attain 300 stable.

Cons: ive nothing bad to say abt board.pci express is only 4 lane not 16 but noone should buy a 60.00 board expecting to run higher end components.if you are ready to invest in fancy video cards and seek wild overclocking, certainly a more expensive board should be among ur investments.everest score is 8500mbs read/5614 write/58.0 latency.sandra mem is 6381/6418

Overall Review: with some tweaking of bios settings,running vista, this board gives a rating of 5.4 for cpu,5.9 ram,5.9 desktop graphics,4.8 gaming graphics,5.9 disk transfer.cpu is 6400,vid card 6800 nvidia stock,memory is gskill 800mhz 4-3-2-5.this ram will run 3-3-2-5-1t at ddr 620 running at 1:1 ratio 533 setting in bios.this yields by far highest mem transfer with this board.hd is 2 samsung SP081C in raid.

Pros: Gave an initial review earlier, and it just gets better. Picked this up primarily for testing components and used it to test some AGP cards for a paper I'm writing...Then threw in a PCI-E ATI based X1950XT, have to say ASRock rocks. With no overclocking going to the PCExpress video from a 7600 GS OC (512RAM) shot PCMARK05 from 4603 to 6021, 3DMark05 from 3119 to 10224, and 3DMark06 from 1837 to 5445. Shows as PCI-E 4x in bench marks but runs real close to full 16 (stock outperforms many full 16x Mobos w/ same card).

Cons: As I stated in the earlier look, the slow points are indeed SATA and Memory. Again, with no overclocking the Windows Experience Index overall was a 4.8 (memory score), with SATA at the max of 150, it got a 5.4, the CPU was 5.4, AERO was 5.9 and 3d graphics was 5.9. Should be able to get 5.0 with mem and 5.6 or better on CPU with some work if wanted. Will be trying a RAID setup with the SATA which should kick that up also.

Overall Review: Specs - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Intel E6400 2.13, 2GB 5300 667, 160 Maxtor SATA (set down to 150), X1950XT with 256 MB, and 19" X9W NAGA monitor. Though not yet tested all together, have had the CPU up from the 2.13 to 2.8, and the memory up from 667 to 800 on a different board going 24/7 with no problems for a couple of weeks. From what I've seen this Mobo should take those settings and maybe more (could probably get to 2.8 or even better with the CPU if one wanted, though would prob want a better fan)

Pros: Bought this to utilize my old parts with a new Core 2 Duo E4300 CPU. Overclocked to 2.4Ghz with stock fan, runs 42C at max load, very stable.

Cons: Met all my requirements for a budget board so no cons from me.

Overall Review: Upgraded from an old P4 3.0 Ghz on a Intel 865 Motherboard using 1GB single channel Crucial PC3200 RAM. I tell you the difference is night and day using this motherboard with the E4300. I averaged 30 FPS with my old setup playing WoW Burning Crusade, installed the new CPU/Motherboard combo and frame rates jumped to 40. I figured I might as well upgrade my RAM too so I bought a GSkill 2GB Dual Channel PC4200 kit for only $80 from Newegg as well. Now I enjoy 60 FPS battles using my old AGP BFG 6800GS 256 Bit/MB Video Card.