Asrock 775 Dual VSTA Incompatible with Nvidia 8800 series

Wow, thats a great increase! Especially for that cpu youre using. My scores with the x1950pro/7950gt were up around 5500, and now I hit 9300 with the 8800GTS 640mb 112sp card. I just got the new msi forceware with dynamic overclocking... using version 175.16 now.
 
Hey guys, I just received a Gigabyte HD 3870 from Newegg and have been having problems getting it to work on my computer. The monitor says that there's no signal detected, and I tried a different monitor and that didn't work either. Then, thinking the card may possibly be DoA, I put it in a friend's computer. It worked. So then I thought perhaps my PCI-E slot was screwy, so I borrowed his 6600 and it worked in my computer. I'm baffled as many people report 3870s working without problems on 775dual-VSTAs. I think it may be a problem with this specific Gigabyte 3870.

Any ideas? I emailed Gigabyte support along with Asrock asking if they had a special BIOS version compatible with the motherboard. Hopefully they'll figure this out for me. I'll update you as things go along.

By the way, if I need to return my card, which manufacturer's HD 3870 should I purchase? I know 3870s out there are compatible with the 775dual-VSTA, but I'm not sure which ones are. Also, do I need to downgrade my motherboard's BIOS from 3.10 for the card to work? So far I've tried 3.00, 2.40, 2.70, and 2.90 iirc. Thanks :)
 
antix12 said:
Well I finally got my Sapphire 4850 today. It turns out it was actually left by FedEx at my door this morning. I was expecting it today so I went to check the tracking after not getting it this afternoon and it showed as delivered so I checked and sure enough it was there. I am running a E4300 on a 4CoreDual-VSTA with 2 gigs of ram. I upgraded to the 4850 from an agp x1950 pro. My new 3dMark 2006 score is 9687 up from 4931. That jump is pretty darn significant. I had not really run a 3dmark since I got the x1950 pro so I was not really sure why my score was very low and I was not expecting that much of a difference. Overall I am very very pleased with the upgrade and can't wait to get into some games with it.

As previous posters have stated the new 4800 series boards work great in the Asrock boards you just have to disable the PCIE Downstream Pipeline setting in the bios to get rid of image corruption and you are good to go. Thanks a lot to everyone who has contributed to this thread and made it so useful to everyone involved.
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Just joined to say thank you. I was just on the verge of buying an AGP 3850 HIS IceQ card till I came across this thread. Now I have placed an order for an MSI HD4850. Not only is it a better card but when I upgrade my mobo this card can now come with me. Happy days! :D
 
Just wanted to report in that the 9800 GTX is compatible with the 4CoreDual-VSTA (minor revision of the 775Dual-VSTA). My friend upgraded from a 7900 GTO to a 9800 GTX and has not had any issues with running it on the 4CoreDual-VSTA.
 
I abandoned the HD 3870s and went for an eVGA 8800GT (the new dual-slot model). It's working without any issues. :D
 
BillParrish said:
Typically card manufacturers do not provide us with that information (Fans Intel uses on stock heatsinks excepted). If you can find out who really made the fan, and it is not a "special" some MTBF data might be found.

So the answer is, we have no way of knowing 98% of the time. You might also note the fairly large market in replacement GPU cooling. Yes some is for improved performance but I am guessing they sell an awful lot of coolers for replacements of dead stock fans. I fixed that problem ;)


In my long experience Northbridge and video card fans fail more often than CPU fans. They tend to be smaller and dust clogging is more of an issue. It is strange. A quad core Q6600 costs $209 and comes with an fan that will last (just based on personal experience here, have no hard data) 3+ years and probably more like 5+.. A $300 video card comes with a POS fan you can just about bet will last 2 years max, if you clean it.
This is a generalization but pretty accurate in my experience. Fans used on the newer high end cards in the last couple of years seem to be of better quality. Things seem to be getting better but the smaller fan size and typically higher RMPs are not things that help a fan live a long life.


http://mysite.verizon.net/ressdxka/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/computer003.jpg

LOL well I thought I fixed the problem. :eek: The slot fan below the video card used for cooling the memory and the rest of the components on the card is now noisy when I turn it up full speed. It lasted about 2 years in spite of being cleaned and oiled at the end of the first year of use. For those with sharp eyes, yes thats an old picture of my ATI XT1950, the 8800GT I now use received the exact same treatment, same GPU block even.
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Does a GPU fan's life decrease if you always run it at 100% thru Rivatuner, or does that not matter? I always run mine at 100%, even when just browsing. Cant really hear it with the loud AC in the room!
 
common sense tells me that, yes, it does reduce its life. but common sense has failed me, before.
 
stickboy said:
Don't discount the 8800gts 640 ssc... newegg now has it for 345. There is a $40 rebate (305 net) and a copy of quake wars. It's faster than the GT, has much better cooling, and has no issues with the PT8800Ultra/Pro boards. Comparing my crysis benchmarks to others with GTs, I'm getting as good or better results than PCI-e 16x boards with GTs and similiar processors at high resolutions (1680x1050). I wish I had a proper board to put this into.
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This card is now 179-- 149 with MIR! Its the last 8800 gts 640mb card left standing at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130317
 
Yes, I was wondering whether slowing down the fan increases resistance and thereby throttling it down might actually lower its life span!
 
Stick, do our boards have a serial port for an RS-232 cable? I have a telescope I want to hook up to the computer and it needs an RS-232 connection.

Definitely go for that card-- I dont know how long they'll be around for.
 
A-L-E-X said:
Stick, do our boards have a serial port for an RS-232 cable? I have a telescope I want to hook up to the computer and it needs an RS-232 connection.

Definitely go for that card-- I dont know how long they'll be around for.
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Yes, I believe there is a serial port on the 4coredual boards. I believe it is the smaller version of the RS-232 port, looks like a vga port except its male instead of female.
 
alex, i picked up another evga 8800gts ssc off of ebay for $105. Should make for a good rig, eventually.
 
CAn I just have confirmation from anyone of how well a 8600 works? Also, does the 9500/9600 have the same compatability level? My ati 9800 has just begun artifacting, overheating and having lots of VPU errors so I need to get a new card...dont have the money to do a system upgrade, however. Speedy reply would be appreciated :).
Lizz.
 
hellknight_lizz said:
CAn I just have confirmation from anyone of how well a 8600 works? Also, does the 9500/9600 have the same compatability level? My ati 9800 has just begun artifacting, overheating and having lots of VPU errors so I need to get a new card...dont have the money to do a system upgrade, however. Speedy reply would be appreciated :).
Lizz.
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I ran an 8600GT on mine for 3 months, then stepped up to an 8800GT. I had a lot of trouble at first until I realized that something in RivaTuner was not playing nice with the jump from AGP to PCI-E. If you've been using Riva with AGP (especially the NVSTRAP boot loader) I recommend uninstalling it, then reinstalling it after the 8600 is all set up and running.
 
Guys, I got another 8800GTS -- the same one you have, Stick-- picked it up new from newegg this week for $159-- 129 after MIR. Is the 8800GTS SSC the highest you can go with the 4x bus on our motherboard? I was thinking of getting a higher gpu, but didnt know if I'd see a significant speed increase.

And now that I have two 8800GTS's, I dont know what to do lol.
 
I have the same issue with 2 mobos Dual-VSTA of course. Under XP, if the FSB is overclocked, then I reach windows, I heard beeps (the same sound as uninterpreted keystrokes) and then the PC freezes (right after login) ! That was with a BFG 9600GT. BUT, if I would not overclock my E4300 and let it be at 1.8 Ghz, it would work :(.

Then I changed it for a 8800GT, and it accepted the overclock up to 2.4Ghz (from 1.8Ghz), but after 10 minutes or so of gaming, black screen and PC frozen. I have to test unoverclocked again with this card. The funny thing is with a higher OC I get the bluescreen too, can the bluescreen be overclock related ? (taking into account that without this particular graphic card I can reach these overclocks easily and they were stable for months).

This is indeed an annoying problem with this mobo, and as for the 4x lane, according to reviews that would only account for a 5% loss, so I didn't see that as a major problem when I purchased those, especially I loved the fact you could keep old components at first (AGP, DDR 1) and then upgrade to new ones (PCIe and DDR2)... this flexibility sounded too good to be true on a mobo of this price, well it was too good to be true I guess :).

I suppose I'll replace one of my rigs with an Asus P5K/EPU I have in stock, that way I can OC the E4300 way beyond the OC I could manage with the Dual-VSTA... as for the other its still running a 7800 GS AGP card, so no problems there (and a really good overclock of 2.9Ghz on a e2180 considering that this mobo doesn't have a Vcore setting in the Bios.

Just my 2 cents, and I think I'm done with Asrock, only had problems with them anyway.
Darthsaiyan
 
Asus and Asrock are the same company. Just my 2 cents, but I'd upgrade to a better cpu as well.
 
BTW if you want to upgrade the other mobo and stay with agp, the 3850 agp would be an excellent choice. On the pcie end, I wouldnt go higher than the 8800GTS 640mb SSC (which is faster than the 8800GT) on this board.
 
A-L-E-X said:
Guys, I got another 8800GTS -- the same one you have, Stick-- picked it up new from newegg this week for $159-- 129 after MIR. Is the 8800GTS SSC the highest you can go with the 4x bus on our motherboard? I was thinking of getting a higher gpu, but didnt know if I'd see a significant speed increase.

And now that I have two 8800GTS's, I dont know what to do lol.
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Alex, I just built a SLI rig with the two 8800GTS SSCs and a MSI P7N Diamond 780i mobo.... its pretty fast, 15100 in 3dmark06 with the cards at stock. Putting a ATI 3650 in the 4coredual... it should serve as a nice little workstation/casual gaming machine/htpc.
 
stickboy said:
Alex, I just built a SLI rig with the two 8800GTS SSCs and a MSI P7N Diamond 780i mobo.... its pretty fast, 15100 in 3dmark06 with the cards at stock. Putting a ATI 3650 in the 4coredual... it should serve as a nice little workstation/casual gaming machine/htpc.
Click to expand...

Sounds great! The 8800GTS SSC's have held up well-- and two of them in sli should be a great upper echelon combo. Thats what I should do as well. And the 3650 is probably the last graphics card that will ever be released for AGP, so would work well in the 4coredual.
 
A-L-E-X said:
Sounds great! The 8800GTS SSC's have held up well-- and two of them in sli should be a great upper echelon combo. Thats what I should do as well. And the 3650 is probably the last graphics card that will ever be released for AGP, so would work well in the 4coredual.
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I got the PCIE version... i tested it out this weekend and for a 60 dollar card you really can't beat it. I was able to play all of my games at 1280x1024 with good IQ levels (sans crysis).
 
I saw the new Toms Hardware Video Card guide and it seems like our cards are still near the top of the list. I dont think I will be upgrading any time soon. Having a 3650 AGP just for old times' sake is a good idea, too-- and I can use it when I move the 8800GTS to my other system.
 
<waffle>
Hello, I just read through this thread since I am considering a new GPU.

Maybe I've caught it earlier this time, when I bought my Radeon 9600 I was new to PCs and didn't realise AGP slots came in different versions :( Next upgrade, 6800GT, shady Via chipset didn't like it, new mobo again.....

Now to this upgrade: I have the early version of this board. I cannot recall the details, but I remember checking and this is the dual-vsta that cannot be flashed to a 4core, I think because it only has the pro chipset.

Anyway I hope that doesn't make a difference with the compatibilities. I probably should wait until I can actually afford a new card, but sitting in the dark eating nothing but 9p packs of noodles for the next month is a price worth paying if I can finally play the likes of Grid and Crysis.

I was looking at a 9800GT, but then I saw the 9800GTX+ and the 4850 (which is cheaper than a GTX+). CUDA is selling point for me though, hardware accelerated HD H.264 is something I want and although both do it through DXVA, CUDA has more options and more other abilities.
</waffle>

Anyway... Does anyone know if these assumptions are valid:

1) ATI cards just work? (It would seem so from above posts)
2) Newer nVidia cards now work also because they have updated an BIOS? ( I guess an email to Inno3D is worthwhile, since that's the brand I'm looking at)
 
Unfortunately, with that board, you are not going to see a difference between a 150 dollar card and a 250 dollar card. The 4x PCIE bus is pretty much saturated with even older mainstream cards. You probably won't see any difference in speed between a 9800GT and a 9800GTX+. I would wager that even a 9600GT would be as fast as those cards on the board you have. For price/performace, you can't really beat the 4850 but it doesn't have CUDA. And I wouldn't put too much stock into 100% CUDA support for older 8xxx/9xxx series cards either. The latest Asrock BIOS supposedly adds support for the 4850/4870 cards. The EVGA Nvidia cards have the best track record for compatibility with these PT880 boards. Make sure you have a PSU that can handle the new card.
 
My PSU is Hiper Type R 580W, so should be fine, although the rear fan is sticking and needs sorting, but I have a 600W somewhere which might just do (cheapo one, so maybe not) while the hiper is being fixed.

Yeah I know the slow slot will be an issue, but I will get a new mobo soon, maybe a 1GB card would help, but they are at a premium. The prices are different in the uK (ie we get scammed sideways).

You may be right, once you get past a certain level at this board performance is crippled and by the time I get a new board prices may have fallen a bit, I screwed up buying 2GB OCZ platinum DDR800 last year which is woefully underused on this board, thinking I could afford a new gfx&mobo within months, now the price is a fraction what I paid.

These may not be the best prices, but are the ones at my local shop:
Code: 
SAPP HD 3650 512MB   £43.50
XVIS 9500GT  512MB   £46.50
XVIS 9500GT  1GB     £55.00
XVIS 9600GT  512MB   £75.25 
SAPP HD 3850 512MB   £83.25 
XVIS 9800GT  512MB   £91.75 
SAPP HD 3870 512MB   £92.25
XVIS 9800GT  1GB    £114.00  
SAPP HD 4850 512MB  £128.25 (I know I get get for £115 inc del online)
INNO 9800GTX+512MB  £129.75

So I could just save the cash and just get a 3650 for now, advantages being:

*I know it works on the board
*I get the HD decoding I need
*I get on the PCIe path cheaply, having a PCIe means board upgrade is one step.
*Even this card is faster than my 6800GT
*Lower power consumption
*Sexy blue look on the sapphire fits the theme in my case (Blue LEDs on cpu fan, blue PSU, blue cables, blue cathodes, etc).
*Once I've upgraded both the board and GPU, the card can go back in this board and my 6800 is still free.
*I have 4 PCI cards, so a dual slot PCIe wont actually fit....
*I can put the rest of the cash to one side and upgrade in the new year, probably by the time I get around to a new board, the 9800GTX+ will be the 3650's price cheaper anyway and better cards will be in my price range.
*nVidia's naming structure is winding me up.

If I knew the 9500GT worked, that might be better since

*I _think_ it's a bit faster
*I get CUDA & physx capabilities.

Although I'm not sure if the 1GB 9500GT is worth the extra £8.50.

I'll mull it over the next day or so.

I'm mostly looking at Toms hardware Q3 charts for assessing relative card performance, but it's missing some cards.
 
If you want to play Grid or Crysis, forget about the 3650. I have a Powercolor 3650 PCIE in my 4coredual rig and its barely sufficient. It overheats badly, too. I get 2D artifacts after playing a game. For the price, the 9800GT is a pretty good card. It should play crysis as well as a 4850. Its compatibility cannot be guaranteed, though, so make sure the store will let you return it if it doesn't work.
 
Doubt the 9800GT can perform as well as a 4850 at higher resolutions with AA. 4850 still ranges around the $180 range...so it would make more sense to simply fork over an additional $20 for a GTX260 if you are even thinking about going with a 4850.
 
A GTX260 on a PT880 board? Don't see the point unless there are plans for a mobo upgrade, soon.
 
I hope this thread aint dead yet! :p Stick and anyone else, has AsRock released a new board thats any better than what I have now? Im still rolling along with my 8800GTS, 4CoreDual and Q6600. Is there any reason for me to upgrade my gpu-- would I see a difference in Crysis or anything else?
 
A-L-E-X said:
I hope this thread aint dead yet! :p Stick and anyone else, has AsRock released a new board thats any better than what I have now? Im still rolling along with my 8800GTS, 4CoreDual and Q6600. Is there any reason for me to upgrade my gpu-- would I see a difference in Crysis or anything else?
Click to expand...

When I had finished my transition phase (DDR to DDR2 and AGP to PCI-E), I upgraded to this AsRock board. Better OC, able to support the full power of my RAM, SLI support, still good legacy peripheral support, and able to handle Wolfdale/Yorkfield, all for a decent price. I had been planning on the MSI 650i board for ages, but it turned out to have terrible Wolfdale/Penryn support and to be rather finicky otherwise. AsRock came late to the table with their 650i board, but they came out strong.
 
Well, I am loving my 780i board with e8500 with the two 8800GTS SSCs in SLI. Its at least twice as fast as the 4coredual setup was.

You aren't going to see any differences with a better GPU on your setup because of the PCIE bottleneck. Plus, there really isn't anything THAT much faster than your current 8800GTS SSC. GPUs have seem to hit a wall where performance isn't going up as fast per revolution as it was a few years ago.
 
I should get an SLI board as well-- I have two 8800GTS lying around, and the other one is still in the box!
 
Sorry to bump this old thread, but I found it and its wealth of information last night while searching google. I was planning on ordering a vid card today, and the 9800GT was at the top of a short list of cards I am considering - since the 9800GT is essentially the same card as the 8800GT, I wanted to confirm some things before I purchased.

I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer.


stickboy said:
Unfortunately, with that board, you are not going to see a difference between a 150 dollar card and a 250 dollar card. The 4x PCIE bus is pretty much saturated with even older mainstream cards. You probably won't see any difference in speed between a 9800GT and a 9800GTX+. I would wager that even a 9600GT would be as fast as those cards on the board you have.
Click to expand...

1) Stickboy, do you still feel that this is the case? The cards I was considering were the 9600GSO (~$80), the 9600GT (~$100), and 9800GT (~$120). I'd like to stick with my 4CoreDual-VSTA for at least the next 6 months. Has anyone had any problems with 9600GT or 9600GSO compatibility?

stickboy said:
The EVGA Nvidia cards have the best track record for compatibility with these PT880 boards.
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2) Are EVGA 9800GTs still considered the best option as far as compatibility is concerned and you would advise against the purchase of another brand? I was considering cards from EVGA, MSI, XFX, PNY, BFGTech.

3) If my understanding is correct, all the newer EVGA 9800GTs now have the proper bios flash so that they should work with the VIA PT880 boards - I don't have to mess around with any of the bios flashing that people earlier in this thread had to do, correct. Do I have to do any changes of any sort to either the card bios or my MOBO bios, or should the new 9800GTs just work, right out of the box?

Thanks for all your help.
 
On a PT880 board a 9800GT may perform noticeably better than a 9600GT in some cases such as very high resolutions and with lots of AA but you may not be able to use those settings in most new games anyway. If the difference is only 20-40 bucks, though, you may just as well get the 9800GT. Newegg recently had a sweet deal on a 9800GT with a free copy of call of duty 5 for only $130.

As far as compatibility, I would think you should be okay as there doesn't seem to be any more BIOS issues.
 
stickboy said:
On a PT880 board a 9800GT may perform noticeably better than a 9600GT in some cases such as very high resolutions and with lots of AA but you may not be able to use those settings in most new games anyway. If the difference is only 20-40 bucks, though, you may just as well get the 9800GT. Newegg recently had a sweet deal on a 9800GT with a free copy of call of duty 5 for only $130.

As far as compatibility, I would think you should be okay as there doesn't seem to be any more BIOS issues.
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I ended up picking up the 9800GT from newegg, got COD with it too heh.

Question - what - if any - settings do I need to change in the mobo bios? My current settings were OCd to 290mhz on the FSB, and it was set to syncronize the PCI-e speed with FSB speed, and as such my PCI-e was running at 109mhz (stock is 100mhz). would this cause a problem? I backed off my OC back to stock speed for now (which brings the PCI-e back to 100mhz). I want to OC again but I don't want to fry the card by runnning too high of a PCI-e frequency - not sure if there is a danger of that?

Also - the setting "PCIE Downstream Pipeline" - what is this? Do I need to change a setting for this? This is my first PCI-e card and so this is new territory for me. I don't want to mess up the card or my mobo by having an incorrect setting. Currently it's set to auto. There is also "enable" and "disable" available.
 
Nealoc187 said:
I ended up picking up the 9800GT from newegg, got COD with it too heh.

Question - what - if any - settings do I need to change in the mobo bios? My current settings were OCd to 290mhz on the FSB, and it was set to syncronize the PCI-e speed with FSB speed, and as such my PCI-e was running at 109mhz (stock is 100mhz). would this cause a problem? I backed off my OC back to stock speed for now (which brings the PCI-e back to 100mhz). I want to OC again but I don't want to fry the card by runnning too high of a PCI-e frequency - not sure if there is a danger of that?

Also - the setting "PCIE Downstream Pipeline" - what is this? Do I need to change a setting for this? This is my first PCI-e card and so this is new territory for me. I don't want to mess up the card or my mobo by having an incorrect setting. Currently it's set to auto. There is also "enable" and "disable" available.
Click to expand...

If your OC works then go with it.

Change PCIE Downstream Pipeline to disabled. This setting usually causes big problems with most of the newer cards.
 
I disabled PCIE Downstream Pipeline and it actually seemed to cause some instability for me. I kept getting an "nv4_disp is stuck in an infinite loop" blue screen of death. tried changing drivers to a few different driver versions and still kept getting the error. sometimes when gaming (microsoft flight simulator) and once while just browsing a forum. must've gotten that error 6 times with 3 different sets of drivers. i'm back with it set to auto now, and I've been using the computer for about 4 hours now with no problems (other than the fact that my microsoft flight simulator is exhibiting some strange graphical problems, textures on buildings and aircraft are loading so slowly and bogging down framerates so badly as they load that it makes the game unflyable). in fact this slow texture loading is the entire reason that I asked about some of the buis settings, I was hoping that changing some bios settings might fix this problem, but i had no luck changing any bios settings. only made things more unstable with no improvement in the performance in flight simulator.

going to do some more testing with it tomorrow to try to figure out what is causing that. do you know what sort of problems have been caused NOT setting it to disabled?

do you have any idea what that setting actually does/means?

thanks for your help by the way.
 
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