ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI: Core 2 Duo goes mATX
by Gary Key on September 1, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Quick Thoughts
The ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI is a very affordable budget board for the Intel market that provides a very good feature set for around US $75. The performance of the board in the majority of the synthetic and game benchmarks was very good if not class leading at times. This is quite a feat for ASRock as our 945P board did not perform as well in previous testing. The stability of the board was excellent in all areas of testing and general usage with the proper memory settings. However, we were frustrated during overclocking with the limited memory voltage options as well as the lack of CPU core voltage settings. With that said, let's move on to our initial performance opinions regarding this board.
In the video area, the inclusion of a PCI-E X16 capable slot provides for a myriad of upgrade possibilities if you chose this route. The X16 slot will operate in X1 mode if the onboard graphics capability is used. The board also features Intel's prior generation GMA950 graphics core. This core actually provides a very clear and color saturated signal to your monitor although it will not be mistaken for an upper end ATI card. The display performance is very good for 2D applications all the way up to its 2048x1536 resolution capability. You can probably play the occasional 3D based game from several years back without issue but most 3D games released in the last three years will have trouble with this video solution. ASRock also includes a DVI output card that is installed in the X16 PCIE slot and provides dual monitor capability, and this worked perfectly in our testing. We also tried it with our Acer 24" LCD monitor without issue as the primary display out device.
In the performance area, the ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI generated very consistent and competitive benchmark scores in the gaming, general application, and synthetic tests. The stability of the board was excellent during testing provided we did not push our memory too far. Although we were able to match the other motherboard settings at DDR2-667, we always had the feeling that the memory was on the verge of not being stable unless we increased the CAS rate to 4. We were able to pass all of our tests at 3-4-3-10 at DDR2-667 but a small bump in the front side bus to 271 would render those settings inoperable. The limited memory voltage selection and lack of vCore settings is a setback for this board as we otherwise feel it has the potential to reach its maximum FSB of 350.
Overall, the board offers a very affordable platform for a small case enclosure and would be an excellent alternative for a HTPC system. In fact, we will be comparing several mATX boards in the near future in just this environment that will include power consumption, thermals, and video out capability. By upgrading the video capability to a lower range card like the NVIDIA 7600GS we found this motherboard to be just as competitive at stock speeds as boards costing over $100 more in gaming and audio/visual work. The board will never be the first choice for the computer enthusiast due to limited overclocking and memory settings along with its pedestrian heritage. However, it would make an excellent second system with the right components for a LAN gaming machine or even a primary gaming machine for those on a limited budget looking to use an E6300 Core 2 Duo.
While not as versatile or inexpensive as the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA in allowing you to upgrade from an older system, we still found ourselves gravitating to the stability, compatibility, and performance of the Intel 945G chipset due to the excellent PCI Express graphics performance. We would not hesitate to recommend this motherboard as the platform for a budget HTPC system or even a small form factor gaming system with the right components. In the end, ASRock once again offers excellent value for the money, enough so that your savings can be used for getting what you really want.
The ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI is a very affordable budget board for the Intel market that provides a very good feature set for around US $75. The performance of the board in the majority of the synthetic and game benchmarks was very good if not class leading at times. This is quite a feat for ASRock as our 945P board did not perform as well in previous testing. The stability of the board was excellent in all areas of testing and general usage with the proper memory settings. However, we were frustrated during overclocking with the limited memory voltage options as well as the lack of CPU core voltage settings. With that said, let's move on to our initial performance opinions regarding this board.
In the video area, the inclusion of a PCI-E X16 capable slot provides for a myriad of upgrade possibilities if you chose this route. The X16 slot will operate in X1 mode if the onboard graphics capability is used. The board also features Intel's prior generation GMA950 graphics core. This core actually provides a very clear and color saturated signal to your monitor although it will not be mistaken for an upper end ATI card. The display performance is very good for 2D applications all the way up to its 2048x1536 resolution capability. You can probably play the occasional 3D based game from several years back without issue but most 3D games released in the last three years will have trouble with this video solution. ASRock also includes a DVI output card that is installed in the X16 PCIE slot and provides dual monitor capability, and this worked perfectly in our testing. We also tried it with our Acer 24" LCD monitor without issue as the primary display out device.
In the performance area, the ASRock ConRoe945G-DVI generated very consistent and competitive benchmark scores in the gaming, general application, and synthetic tests. The stability of the board was excellent during testing provided we did not push our memory too far. Although we were able to match the other motherboard settings at DDR2-667, we always had the feeling that the memory was on the verge of not being stable unless we increased the CAS rate to 4. We were able to pass all of our tests at 3-4-3-10 at DDR2-667 but a small bump in the front side bus to 271 would render those settings inoperable. The limited memory voltage selection and lack of vCore settings is a setback for this board as we otherwise feel it has the potential to reach its maximum FSB of 350.
Overall, the board offers a very affordable platform for a small case enclosure and would be an excellent alternative for a HTPC system. In fact, we will be comparing several mATX boards in the near future in just this environment that will include power consumption, thermals, and video out capability. By upgrading the video capability to a lower range card like the NVIDIA 7600GS we found this motherboard to be just as competitive at stock speeds as boards costing over $100 more in gaming and audio/visual work. The board will never be the first choice for the computer enthusiast due to limited overclocking and memory settings along with its pedestrian heritage. However, it would make an excellent second system with the right components for a LAN gaming machine or even a primary gaming machine for those on a limited budget looking to use an E6300 Core 2 Duo.
While not as versatile or inexpensive as the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA in allowing you to upgrade from an older system, we still found ourselves gravitating to the stability, compatibility, and performance of the Intel 945G chipset due to the excellent PCI Express graphics performance. We would not hesitate to recommend this motherboard as the platform for a budget HTPC system or even a small form factor gaming system with the right components. In the end, ASRock once again offers excellent value for the money, enough so that your savings can be used for getting what you really want.
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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.