I had Rev 2.0 in 2007. It let me have a Core 2 Duo, and keep my AGP card and DDR RAM, and it was at least as fast as the then current 965 series boards. This board made me an ASRock fan for life.
“Eventually it will sell out.” I can tell you in 2020 that they absolutely are, not on Newegg, eBay listings are all from Eastern Europe at costs higher than new.
There are alternatives in the same uATX form factor like the Asus P5PE-VM or the Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH, both better built boards than this Asrock.
@@egor8394 There are "unnofficial" microcode bios updates to support every core 2 duo/quads available (including 8xxx series). I have the p5pe-vm, the Ga-8i865GME, and the 775i65g, and the GA is hands down the best bc of bios overclocking options with custom memory clock dividers. Also, for XP and earlier the core 2 duos are faster than Quads as they have much higher clock speeds.
I got this new two years ago. *New.* This is rock solid. I was able to get an E7600 running on this (with a BIOS mod - official support does to E7300). We tried up to the Radeon 4670 AGP without issues but also had success all the way down to Geforce 2. If no ISA is needed, this board can cover a very large number of years, OSes and hardware configurations. Core 2 is also remarkably cool and performant compared to P4, just can't use multiple cores effectively in Win98SE.
There are socket 775 pentiums and they're all north of 3ghz iirc. I remember using a system with such a p4ht and if you turn hyperthreading off it offers adequate single thread performance and superb compatibility with older titles on the 775 platform.
this platform has even power to do some stuff under windows 7, there you can use dual-core or quad core. You can do triple boot system, win98/windowsxp/windows 7. Under windows 7, you can still play games up to 2008-2010 with that HD 3850. With low retro resolutions like 1024x768, it will handle even Crysis 1.
Sanxion7!! I didn't know you were into this sort of thing too... That's cool. I wish I could get a Core-based CPU for my board too. I think the "gv" variant doesn't support them...
@Cringe Department Which is exactly why people bought them. Of course PCIe cards had taken over, I didnt say they hadnt. But that doesnt mean people didnt still buy the older and much cheaper cards and even new motherboards to put them onto. People even bought old motherboards and old agp video cards and built a pc which was new to them with them. Like I said, you had to have been there.
@Cringe Department From what I can tell the board in this video dates from 2012 and it has an AGP slot. Going by what you are saying this board had litterly no customers. ASRock wasnt in the business of making boards knowing nobody at all would buy it. People did buy it, and use the features on it. So your thinking must in some way be wrong.
I also discovered this motherboard many years ago and I have three of them. They are very stable, reliable, I had absolutely no issues (I'm running Win98/Win XP dual boot on all, with different cards such as GeForce 6800, GeForce FX 5900, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro). Regarding Expendable, it crashes because it has a weird built-in CPU test that kicks in during the level loading. If it does not recognize the CPU, it crashes back to the desktop. This can be easily fixed by starting the game with the "-nocputest" argument (fun fact: the Steam version of Expendable has a custom exe that basically does the same thing: it automatically runs the main exe file with the "-nocputest" argument). Regarding GeForce 6800, from my tests, the best driver for Win98 is the final one, 81.98, however there is a catch: not all GeForce 6xxx boards will work OK with it, it's a gamble. As I understand, it depends if your card is one of the first versions or newer. Newer 6xxx cards have a PCIExpress to AGP bridge and those are virtually unusable in Win98, no matter what driver version you try. For example, my GeForce 6800 (non-GT version) is quite decent in Win98 (albeit, not perfect, there are some games that don't behave as expected). On the other hand, I also have a GeForce 6600GT which does not work at all, it crashes right after the driver installation (tested all drivers). Anyway, great review, keep up the good work! :)
Wow that's a diverse motherboard! Definitely a great example of how ASROCK use to make their boards. I may have to pick one of these up for my Retro 98 machine! Also, awesome find on the Albatron 6800, I remember Albatron doing a wonderful job with their boards and video cards.
I also bought one of these after your last video discussing it. :) I had no idea boards like this existed. I also picked up a C2Duo E7200 on ebay for $3.50. Using 2 DIMMs for dual channel RAM could potentially improve graphics performance by speeding up AGP DMA transfers. The system RAM is definitely the bottleneck on this board.
I bought this exact board a month ago because I was looking for a 775 board with agp & core 2 duo support. This board was the most reasonably priced option I could find and you can't beat the fact that it's brand new in a retail box. Haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet but I'm excited to test it out.
I'm a big fan of ASRock, my last 6 boards have been theirs after years of only using ASUS after how impressed I was by the 287 itx board I got for my 4770K, and now they are the first boards I look for when I upgrade, but I still can't get the fact that their name sounds like a bad case of constipation :D
Oh this video makes me sad :D I bought one of these brand new for $50 from newegg in 2013 (yup, they still sold them that late). It worked amazing but I had a show stopper issue with the USB ports that I found out later was caused by my KVM. Unfortunately I had already sold it at that point. I did eventually find a similar gigabyte board on ebay but I had to pay substantially more for it.
Great Vid, thanks for the link to my fav AGP mb, can't wait 'til it arrives have all the bits from my previous board and will be running QX6700 - HIS HD3850 - OCZ ram cheers. BTW less than $100 delivered is a win for sure!
I was able to buy one of these boards new from Newegg, a Pentium E5800 from eBay, MSI Frozr cooler from Amazon, using Audigy 2 sound PCI card, and a GeForce 4Ti 4x agp, OCZ 60gb ssd that I’ve owned since new for years and years, all in a new Antec Sonota Atx case from Newegg. Best Win98SE computer I’ve ever used. Thanks Phil!
Love that board, had mine for a few years now. Works great if you want to do a hybrid dual boot setup for 98/XP. You can even setup your 2 installs to use different video cards. I had a 6800 Ultra for XP and a PCI 5200 for 98 to avoid driver issues. You just have to swap between the AGP/PCI init first in the bios based on what OS you want to use for the day. My only real complaint i had was that there just is not enough pci slots. I ended up putting it away in the closet because I kept wanting to add silly things to both my xp and 98 builds like a physx card, voodoo 2's, and multiple sound cards. Really wish it was a full size board with 6 slots. :(
Bit of reading suggests it achieves AGP compatibility by using the 865G chipset(!) - had no idea something as old as this designed for Northwood Pentium 4 chips could run much later dual and quad core chips - some great engineering from ASRock to make it happen.
This board might be hard to find. In general, good options for a windows 98 Retro PC with AGP are the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 platforms. For Pentium 4 stick with Intel chipset, but SIS is also good, for Athlon 64 VIA is decent, but avoid using the SATA ports.
@@philscomputerlab Huge thanks for the reply, I have a pentium 4 1.3 ghz and an HD 7000 64 MB that i want to have some fun with but finding a board and stuff for it locally is hard so this might be my next best option. Super great content btw my go to for retro
Very interesting! Probably about the best motherboard for AGP graphics card benching. But it's also interesting to see the difference between the old P4 CPUs and the more modern ones. I always thought those Pentium E series were more of a budget processor compared to the Core 2 Duo and Quad series, and seeing a 3.2GHz model is pretty impressive. They say MHz are more important for games, so I'm not sure whether you'd see much benefit running a C2D or C2Q at the faster FSB, at the expense of raw MHz. I dunno, I could be wrong. Who knows.
Yea all this Core 2 stuff, it's really something for a few years in the future :D Not quite retro yet, but this motherboard is real special case. AFAIK the main difference with the higher Core 2 Duo models are higher FSB, but also larger Cache. A E8600 for example should be quite a bit faster, but does it really matter for an AGP video card?
Oh, that remembers me my old and unstable pcchips p23g. That thing was the cheaper the previous owner could find, but it refused to die, most of its capacitors were leaked, some were really badly deformed, it was using a bad generic psu when i got it. The previous owner gave it to me in 2014. I only had sometimes to drown it in alcohol to it give me video. I've used a decent psu, and i was going to relace the caps, but i had to give it to a friend that lost his pc (all burned down) in 2016. It rocked a p4 630ht, and it had soemthing awesome, both ddr400 sockets and ddr2 sockets! 2 ddr400 and 2 ddr2. I've used ddr400 for some time and then ddr2. It was one of these transition motherboards, it was limited to agp 8x (never tried it, i didnt had a agp card in that time), pentium d (and one or other c2d). It has sata (maybe 1) and ide. It was really a interesting board.
I remember some of the driver cd from Asrock motherboards of this era where also a video cd, there was a dat file (mpg1) with a video guide of how to build your new pc with your asrock motherboard
I have the 775i65gv, which is basically the same board without AGP slot (it has an "AGI" slot which is compatible with AGP, but it uses the PCI bus and not all cards work there). Still, it's a very good board that works nicely with practically all Windows versions since 98 and even Linux. It makes for a perfect time-machine PC.
The celeron 420 is the older 65nm part (derived from the first core2 duos, but only singlecore and with reduced cache) whereas the E5800 is based on the wolfdale, which is 45nm variant of core2 cpus. Although the TDP listed for E5800 is twice higher, these CPUs are super power efficient, so no wonder that it consumes even less power than half-the speed and half-the core Celeron chip. And thank you for the video, good job as always. I'm running similar board, but with 865P chipset, fullATX, however does not support core2 duos and dualcore CPUs at all. So I'm stuck with 65nm cedar-mill P4 3.4GHz HT, but it's not as that bad. At the moment, I'm pairing it with Radeon X800XT PE which is okay for my needs. The good thing about "old" motherboard with "new" socket (LGA775) is the fact, that you can buy plenty of silent and high-quality coolers and have nicely quiet XP retro PC system.
Considering the Pentium is clocked much higher, the power draw figures are extremely impressive! 64nm Cedar Mills are the best Pentium 4 CPUs, so that's a good choice. I gave up finding the 3.6 GHz model, seems super rare and expensive. The 3.4 is better value for sure.
Good to finally see your opinion on this board. It is really the best i've owned for retro PCs, due to the flexibility it offers. I once had a PCCHIPS mobo with some VIA chipset on socket 478. It gave me too many headaches to count, even trying different CPUs (i thought my P4 with HT was the issue, but no, even relatively slow Celerons would cause it to BSOD), RAM and GPUs. I was running an X6800 on mine, but i might have been pushing it too far or the CPU was more power hungry than normal ones (it's an Extreme Edition), as every time there was a heavy CPU load, the computer would reset. Thankfully my only other reasonably fast C2D CPU worked (E7600) and i've been a happy camper since. I think it's a power limitation and not an unstable OC as i've had that issue happen when trying a Pentium D 820, which is a power hungry chip (it's two P4 chips in one CPU package) and my E7600 still overclocked further does not give any issues (it runs at 290 MHz FSB for 3.33 GHz). It even has decent support for RAM sticks, i'm using some 512 MB OCZ sticks running at 193 MHz with 2-2-2-5 timings without issue. My Geforce4 Ti 4200 is a beast as well, that card can run even faster than a 4600 on the core, and matches a 4400 on VRAM speed when overclocked. It can't do too taxing games like DOOM 3 or Crysis, but considering the main games i play on it are Descent Freespace, Quake II and some other older games, it's more than enough. You might see some power draw differences between the Celeron and Pentium CPUs due to their architecture. The Celeron is a Conroe core CPU, with 65nm litography. The Pentium is the newer Wolfdale core, at 45nm litography. Just the die shrink provides some power savings, and it gave some 5-10% increase in IPC as well, aside from clocking higher.
Very interesting board. Might be hard to find one now but I'll look around. One thing about the Celeron 420 is that it is hugely overclockable. On my IP35 Pro I just switched the FSB from 800 to 1600 and it doubled the clock rate at stock volts and stock cooler to 3.2GHz. Even at 1066 it should give a nice boost on this board.
Driver 81.98 is what I use for my 6800 XT. I don't know why though but my board doesn't see my card i have to force install the driver. They also made a unofficial driver as well but I never tried it. My 6800 seems to run final fantasy XI pretty well. I also have my DVD rom and IDE hdd for windows 98 with the corsair liquid cooler and windows XP on the SATA connection.
All ive been working with is ddr2 and core 2 quads lately and 775 mbs... so awesome to see what it can do even now adays.. pretty good actually with a q9560 :)
I have been waiting a long time to see one of these on ebay. Finally one was listed in "new" condition for £60 so I snapped it up. Not sure what, if any, advantages it has over my Asus P5PE-VM board. But will be nice addition to my collection to play with.
Take a look at the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2, a Socket 775 motherboard with DDR and DDR2 slots, AGP and PCI-E slots (but al x4 mode) and with CPU support from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Quad
WTF?!?!?! I had no idea about that one. It seems like this: www.asrock.com/mb/spec/upgrade.asp?Model=939cpu%20board was the "AGP" required. Basically a second mini-motherboard. Asrock was a crazy brand in the mid and late 2000's
Oscar Cozar Yeah, they made a few Socket 754/939 with modern (for 2009) chipsets, and also the opposite - they made AM2+ (iirc) board with nForce 3 and ULi combo xD
I quad boot one of these boards with 98se, xp pro, vista, and 7 ultimate, on 3 hard drives, with 3 optical drives (cd, dvd, and blue-ray burners), 2 gb ram, HIS 3850 agp, and core 2 extreme qx6800 and have been running that set up for probably 8 years with a few other extras like sound blaster audigy 2 zs with klipsch promedia 5.1 surround
Great Video, thanks a lot. I'm interested in building an Windows 98 Retro-PC and this board seems to be optimal for this purpose. What do you think about the build-quality of this board?
I sold a few ones on ebay, pulled from old systems. They were revision 2.0, not 3.0, but that shouldn't matter too much. But it did made me wonder how tf did they go for like $50 on auction (starting price 0.01), this explains well.
I have this, still have yet to try it but planning XP/ ubuntu and maybe 98 installs with it. 2GB is still enough for modern linux and some room for older games, hl2/hl2dm and css etc.
Again, I marvel a bit at your enthusiasm here, when it comes to brass tacks, as they say. I have to guess that you are also really good at the sales part. I'm really far from being a "seller of self" tho I'm proud of my old west word :) on ebay. If that's the other nine yards, that would help a lot of us, or give us an achievable foothold. Thank you.
I have the 2.0 revision of this board. The only difference appears to be support for the Wolfdale Pentiums with 800FSB. Mine is equipped with a Q6600 and that’s working flawlessly.
There are several more interested motherboards on VIA PT880 Pro (AGP+4xPCI-E) and Intel 915PL(PCI-E+xAGP(OC PCI) that works with vendors drivers on win98. Even ... PC/PCI connector exist at one of them (with mode). But I must admire that Asrock 775i65G R3.0 can be found easily and bought a new one what makes it the best today. I bought 2 of them.
Just for fun and if you can get a hold of one, try out the Celeron Dual core E3500 sticking to the 800mhz FSB. Would be interesting to see what the IPC is like on that. Great video as always mate.
This motherboard is nice... what suprised me along with that s775 and AGP, was the WIN98 support, figured something like this would be more suited for XP and above, great price too.
you can't go wrong with one of those Dual-Core E series, their high clock speeds are good for old games that relies on a single core yet they're power efficient and fast enough to run modern operating systems (i.e. dual booting W98SE for retro games and Lubuntu or even Ubuntu for basic daily use if paired with a capable enough gpu)
Oh yeah looks like the website has updated now, back in 2014 it only had a few low clock rate CPUs on the V3.0 page (I had a spare Celeron 420 @ 1.6ghz at the time). So a friend told me just to get a used V2.0 on ebay instead. It's listed now on the site, odd.
Thanks Phil! did not think to check Newegg. I've had my eyes on this board on eBay. I believe the 775i65g will be as fun to work with as my 939dual-sata2.
There must be an error in Asrock website, this motherboard actually does not support any Core 2 Quad processors, it does not power on. The Core 2 Duo E6700 or X6800 is the maximum CPU you can put in there. Plenty of power for Win98 or XP anyway which will not make any use of 4 cores.
I have R2.0 version of this board. I've read on some website that E5XXX series of processor may work on R2.0 board. I can confirm my R2.0 with bios P3.30 and board revision 2.12 works with an E5500.
Great review for retro gaming.... i thought about getting this motherboard just for the halibit, but unfortunately, i waited too long, no longer available on newegg for cheap.
I would always have wanted it the other way round back in the day: A board with PCI Express and Socket 478 / DDR1 in order to only upgrade the graphics card.
Very similar to the Abit AS8 I had back in 2005 to 2012. That was an excellent board too with the same chipset and features, although mine had optical in and out for the audio chip. Mine lacked support for Core2 series CPU and that came weeks later in the very next motherboard version from Abit.
Awesome find for a 775 board with AGP. In the states, that board on ebay is not cheap. Seems to average about $70USD. What is cheap is the ASRock K8NF3-VSTA and still quite available. I got mine months ago for $15 with free shipping. They still sell for that price now. It is a 754 socket AMD board with an nForce 3 chipset but it does work in Windows 98. That is how I'm playing Half-Life with nGlide and A3D. Good info on the 6800GT. I've been wanting to try mine in Win98 but just haven't found the time.
I used to have an ABIT AS8 775 board with AGP, and that was an excellent board although was DOA the day I bought it! I had to send it back for repair before I could finally use it, but it lasted me seven years until I accidentally killed I assume, the BIOS chip with a failing PSU.
I guess I missed that, my mistake, was at work focused on many things. Still, nice catch, decent board but the AMD socket I got, quite cheap used. I paid extra for the Athlon 64 because it was new in box. Kinda wish I kept the box but I usually keep the modern stuff for display (although I would frame a Voodoo 5 box). It is rare that such a board is available from a big retailer. But watch out. Phil warned you. He might buy the lot!
That's cool. That looks to be a rare find. According to the last completed sale, one hasn't been listed since April and only four previous sales are listed. I bet it would work in Windows 98 with the nvidia drivers as my K8NF3-VSTA does. The audio doesn't but you wouldn't want it anyway. Good for a collector I'd say. As listed, it looks great for an uber Win98 setup but as a WinXP setup, unless you had a Radeon HD 3850 that needed a home, you could get a mobo/CPU/RAM combo with a PCIe slot and add a powerful PCI-e video card.
Hey Phil, great video, but i don't know if you can help me out here with my recent purchase of the Sound Blaster Audigy (original version)? i don't know if it supports wavetable synth as either onboard or as an extension or if it doesn't support it at all :/ i am new to this retro PC thing and i want to make a retro pc which can play both DOS games and run in win98 :) Thanks for the videos and insight, keep the great videos coming :)
I wanted to get more out of my E5800 (which my example can't overclock worth a darn, even 3.3GHz crashes), but apparently the multiplier control doesn't work. The multiplier adjustment setting in the BIOS only works when SpeedStep is disabled (which forces the multiplier to maximum anyways). I have a pair of Samsung TCCD-based sticks and wanted to stretch it's legs. Still way faster than my P4.
Some time ago I had the R2.0 of this motherboard (with the latest beta bios that allows using the same processors as the R3.0) and I used it in a frankenstein HTPC with a Radeon HD 4350 in XP, and later with a 3650 and Windows 7. It was a very geek and surprisingly usable HTPC, but in the end I exchanged the mobo for a more conventional one with PCIe slots so I can use more modern graphic cards and end up selling it.
Another drawback is that the standard intel cpu cooler doesn’t run slower than 2600rpm, so it’s very loud even though the temperature is below 50 degrees Celsius. Need to find me a solution to throttle that fan.
Never have I purchased an item so quickly, to get one before they are out of stock =) btw Phil, what video was it you showed of your testbench? The black one you are using in this video?
Hey, I'm looking to instal W10 the LTSC version on it...what do you think of that? Did you try installing a later Windows version than XP on it? I think W10 LTSC x86 would run decent on this mobo...don't know about the x64 version, i think it would be slower on this config than the x86 one...i also have a E5800, 2GB RAM, Gefore 7900 GS, WD Black 500GB on SATA...what do you think? Leave me a reply if you can. Thanks
I found a curious motherboard on a local listing which has both a PCI-E 16x slot and an AGP 8x slot. This one is from ASUS but there seems to be at least one from ASrock as well, but these are very uncommon since they where sort of transitional motherboards for those with AGP grphics cards panning to upgrade to PCI-E. However there was a compromise, the the PCI-E 16x slot runs at only 4x and only works with certain cards that support running at 4x, so I'm wondering which one is better and if it's worth picking up this mother knowing there are a good number of cards I won't be able to use. Do you have a motherboard like that?
i have a retro build with an Abit AN7 (nforce 2 ultra) and a geforce 6800 ultra, it works fine in win98se and xp - i guess your problem with win98 is the mainboard thats much newer than the graphics drivers used.
I just ordered one up on newegg. I think I might go Win XP since I have already built 4 Win 98 machines. 2 P4 builds and 2 Athlon 64 builds! I built a Win XP machine using a socket 775 Gigabyte motherboard with a Core2Quad Q9550 @2.8GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 500GB SATA Drive and a Geforce 8800 GTS video card. That's a serious powerhouse for a XP build but maybe this one could be a less powerful one to hit that mid 00s mark.
Yea apart from Crysis, and I haven't tested this game yet, any XP era game will work great. As for graphics card, man we are spoilt for choice! A 8800 series card is a great pick.
I have a big box of Foxconn PCI connectors sitting in my basement. About 500 of them, brand new. I needed at some point in the past a couple of them to fix a motherboard, and this is the only way I could get my hands on them at the time. They didn't even cost a lot, I think I paid about $20 on ebay. I used what I needed, and the rest are sitting there since. All NIB.
Awesome video Phil, just bought this MB and an E5800 because of this vid and i am really happy but retested my own and TDP doesn't match, 9:56 it looks like yours is working at 1.6GHz (100Mhzx16). At 3.2Ghz Idle is 59W and Load 85-90W (QuakeII Vsync OFF), even with my GPU(9600XT 22W TDP) vs Your's (Geforce 2 GTS 33W TDP). When i downclock to 1.6GHz then results are comparable.(my PSU is 85%+). Don't get me wrong I appreciate your work and I do not cry about a few Watt's ;) I'm just curious.
It seems to be GPU driver, on Linux and a raw Windows98SE it's 50W, but straight after install driver goes up again (Catalyst 6.2) anyway, i downclocked CPU to 1.52Ghz because i get exactly the same fps like on 3.2GHz in 1280x1024 (9600XT) :)
Curious question, how is the support for DOS gaming with Intel Extreme Graphics II (up to quake I & II)? I guess that there is no drivers for hardware accelerated 3D graphics, but how does it handle SVGA / VGA / EGA and CGA? is it possible to run most games on integrated graphics (and instead use software rendering for early 3D games).... I'm actually keen on buying this board since I have both DDR memory and 775 processors laying around. Although getting a PCI or AGP graphics card isn't that much of a hassle it would be cool to run the computer without it.
Funny thing is that i was entertaining picking up an intel x48 board for my q6600. However, i found that while it had pci express and still had an ide slot, it would need ddr3. Rendering my ddr2 useless. The paradox is that anything older becomes a heck of a lot more expensive.
One thing I'm curious about is, how does this board do for supporting upper memory blocks? It seems with my limited testing, most every motherboard after ~2003 has hardware mapped into the upper memory area which makes playing a lot of DOS games under Windows with sound wonky at best. For example, I have a system where Monster Bash works for me with MS-DOS mode but only adlib audio. In Windows 98SE, I get no audio at all. Perhaps it may have more to do with using a PCI sound card? Most everything else works though consistently and Monster Bash specifically mentions requiring EMS (for which I'm not 100% sure is working properly) for Sound Blaster effects. Of course, the system is fast enough to run DOSBox which wholly side-steps the issue, but that precludes any efforts to underclock. Regardless, I've very much appreciated your very exhaustive of sound and graphics cards for Windows 98. It has been very informative.
This is the chief reason I have a Windows 98SE/DOS P5A-B system. However, exploring DOS gaming in Windows XP with VDMSound I've become aware of the limitation of requiring EMS emulation for many games, and that also tends to require upper memory to function (EMS Magic will work at the expense of allocating the 64KB EMS frame in the first 640KB, which obvious results in many games not loading). So, I'm still curious about the upper memory block situation, if you're inclined to test for that in this or future examples. I don't think it's nearly as much of an issue on SS7 boards. Windows 98 and DOS gaming seems to always be a matter of compromise. Thankfully, though, you've sorted out a lot of the details if one wants to make a few separate rigs.
I will definitely check out DOS compatibility at some point, the BIOS has some nice options for slowing down the CPU, but you can also disable the L1 Cache and other tricks.
Would love to see a highest performing Windows 98 SE system. Stuff like a SATA controller, Pentium 4 3.8GHz, 6800 Ultra, 1GB DDR2 667MHz Dual Channel. Reason why, is because I want these parts, but if something has conflicts, I might not want to get these. I'm also having a friend build it for me, so I don't want him getting stuff that doesn't work with each other. I don't really see a video or a forum with said specs either.
I might use it again in future projects, trying newer drivers, but if I ever do a dedicated review on the 6800 GT, I will be using Windows XP of course.
I wish someone would make a modern BTX motherboard so I could update my LGA775 Dell Optiplex PC's. With all the old business PC's still being used for gaming and everyday computing, I think they would sell millions of units. Thanks for the video Phil!
Nah they wouldn't. BTX is long dead. Get a hacksaw and install an ATX backplate to upgrade if you want something newer. Otherwise stick with that Core2Quad until it dies. Then upgrade to a completely new system.
The BTX form factor is dead, but that doesn't change the fact that there are millions of them still being used. Believe me, people would buy a modern BTX mobo in a heartbeat. It's not really about the backplate, I've already cut one out of a 780 to install a 980 mobo (both BTX). It's the reverse placement of the PCIe slots, RAM slots, and CPU socket that screws everything up. Unless you make more room with an ITX mobo in a SFF, or a mATX in a Mini Tower the layout is just too screwed up when you have to account for the PSU placement and hard drive/ disc drive placement. It could be done but it's definitely not worth the work involved.
As far as I know, there was never any non-OEM BTX cases produced because there was never any non-OEM motherboards produced. BTX was all Dell, HP and maybe a couple other OEM's, it was never popular enough to go mainstream. But there are quite a few cases that allow you to install the motherboard tray reversed so you can have the PC open on the left side like a BTX PC. That configuration will place the ATX mobo upside down where the PCIe slots are at the top and the cpu is at the bottom. A BTX board would be perfect for this design. But I'm talking more about upgrading old OEM PC's with a new BTX mobo. Either way I think their would be a significant market for a modern BTX motherboard. Sorry for the long response!
Pretty nice, I think I will get one to do an XP dual boot machine. Looking into it, it's a bummer this board forces a 3:2 divider on your RAM with 1066 FSB CPU's, as ~355 MHz DDR1 kind of sucks for any of those Core 2's. Physical pin mods won't change the FSB from 1066 to 800 either with this particular board.
It is nice universal motherboard. You can install windows 98, use agp video card, you can use windows xp, you can use even windows 7 64-bit with 64-bit processors. It even can run crysis. But I doubt that I need this motherboard. Because if I need fast PC - I will go modern PC. And I don't like windows 98. The only reason for win98 is Aureal a3d 2.0 support. MS DOS support is weak on this motherboard - there is not any ISA slots. So you limited to PCI sound cards. This motherboard is not retro and not modern. It is a compromise
Lol the Celeron 420, I used to use one back in the day then upgraded to a E1200 or something like that then to a E6400. Was a cash strapped college student back in the day :s
Hi Hhil i love you vids and i made an old parts retro pc but i have a problem so can you at least tell me what the problem is? So the pc cannot recognize the usb keyboard and when i turn it on it says CMOS Checksum Error-Defaults Loaded.So What is the problem?
Before we get a price explosion. The AsRock ConRoe865PE (4GB Ram Max, 4 Slots) is basically the same board (even better, it supports up to 4GB Ram) but without integrated graphics.
hmm if the PE got 100-300mhz FSB vs 66-300 then the G is better for retro, because you can use it with slower cpu's EDIT: Ah forget what i wrote, you mean the ram speed. xD
I had Rev 2.0 in 2007. It let me have a Core 2 Duo, and keep my AGP card and DDR RAM, and it was at least as fast as the then current 965 series boards. This board made me an ASRock fan for life.
“Eventually it will sell out.”
I can tell you in 2020 that they absolutely are, not on Newegg, eBay listings are all from Eastern Europe at costs higher than new.
I bought the last one listed locally. Hesitated for quite a while but ended up getting it.
There are alternatives in the same uATX form factor like the Asus P5PE-VM or the Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH, both better built boards than this Asrock.
@@Romerco77This motherboard (775i65g) supports quad-core processors. The same cannot be said about p5pe-vm.
I got a full pc from olx romania, includin this motherboard(r2.0) for 33$
@@egor8394 There are "unnofficial" microcode bios updates to support every core 2 duo/quads available (including 8xxx series). I have the p5pe-vm, the Ga-8i865GME, and the 775i65g, and the GA is hands down the best bc of bios overclocking options with custom memory clock dividers. Also, for XP and earlier the core 2 duos are faster than Quads as they have much higher clock speeds.
I got this new two years ago. *New.* This is rock solid. I was able to get an E7600 running on this (with a BIOS mod - official support does to E7300). We tried up to the Radeon 4670 AGP without issues but also had success all the way down to Geforce 2. If no ISA is needed, this board can cover a very large number of years, OSes and hardware configurations. Core 2 is also remarkably cool and performant compared to P4, just can't use multiple cores effectively in Win98SE.
Win9x and DOS support single-core CPUs only. The other core(s) will go completely unused.
There are socket 775 pentiums and they're all north of 3ghz iirc. I remember using a system with such a p4ht and if you turn hyperthreading off it offers adequate single thread performance and superb compatibility with older titles on the 775 platform.
this platform has even power to do some stuff under windows 7, there you can use dual-core or quad core. You can do triple boot system, win98/windowsxp/windows 7. Under windows 7, you can still play games up to 2008-2010 with that HD 3850. With low retro resolutions like 1024x768, it will handle even Crysis 1.
Sanxion7!! I didn't know you were into this sort of thing too... That's cool.
I wish I could get a Core-based CPU for my board too. I think the "gv" variant doesn't support them...
you know a tear came in my eyes when i saw this motherboard
this is the same one i used in my first build in 2008
@Cringe Department Cards were cheaper, boards were cheaper and a lot of more better features on them lol
You have to have been there I guess.
@Cringe Department Which is exactly why people bought them.
Of course PCIe cards had taken over, I didnt say they hadnt. But that doesnt mean people didnt still buy the older and much cheaper cards and even new motherboards to put them onto.
People even bought old motherboards and old agp video cards and built a pc which was new to them with them.
Like I said, you had to have been there.
@Cringe Department From what I can tell the board in this video dates from 2012 and it has an AGP slot.
Going by what you are saying this board had litterly no customers. ASRock wasnt in the business of making boards knowing nobody at all would buy it.
People did buy it, and use the features on it. So your thinking must in some way be wrong.
I also discovered this motherboard many years ago and I have three of them. They are very stable, reliable, I had absolutely no issues (I'm running Win98/Win XP dual boot on all, with different cards such as GeForce 6800, GeForce FX 5900, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro). Regarding Expendable, it crashes because it has a weird built-in CPU test that kicks in during the level loading. If it does not recognize the CPU, it crashes back to the desktop. This can be easily fixed by starting the game with the "-nocputest" argument (fun fact: the Steam version of Expendable has a custom exe that basically does the same thing: it automatically runs the main exe file with the "-nocputest" argument). Regarding GeForce 6800, from my tests, the best driver for Win98 is the final one, 81.98, however there is a catch: not all GeForce 6xxx boards will work OK with it, it's a gamble. As I understand, it depends if your card is one of the first versions or newer. Newer 6xxx cards have a PCIExpress to AGP bridge and those are virtually unusable in Win98, no matter what driver version you try. For example, my GeForce 6800 (non-GT version) is quite decent in Win98 (albeit, not perfect, there are some games that don't behave as expected). On the other hand, I also have a GeForce 6600GT which does not work at all, it crashes right after the driver installation (tested all drivers). Anyway, great review, keep up the good work! :)
buddy please let me buy one.
Thanks foe the Video Phil, yes I took your advice and bought one also.Lots of Socket 775 CPU`s to try.
There's a version called P4i65G which is similar but with socket 478. Great board, built my P4 machine around it.
I have one of them, but it's dead, no video signal at all, no matter what I do
Awesome video as always Phil, just bought this MB and an E5800 because of this vid. Can't wait to play around with this!
Wow that's a diverse motherboard! Definitely a great example of how ASROCK use to make their boards. I may have to pick one of these up for my Retro 98 machine! Also, awesome find on the Albatron 6800, I remember Albatron doing a wonderful job with their boards and video cards.
Yea I wonder what happened to Albatron as a brand...
I also bought one of these after your last video discussing it. :) I had no idea boards like this existed. I also picked up a C2Duo E7200 on ebay for $3.50. Using 2 DIMMs for dual channel RAM could potentially improve graphics performance by speeding up AGP DMA transfers. The system RAM is definitely the bottleneck on this board.
I bought this exact board a month ago because I was looking for a 775 board with agp & core 2 duo support. This board was the most reasonably priced option I could find and you can't beat the fact that it's brand new in a retail box. Haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet but I'm excited to test it out.
IronicTonic For what type of applications do you even use this?
Dude! No XP build is complete without "Can it run Crysis??" ☺
Great Video Phil, love the 6800GT Ive just upgraded an old Packard Bell PC with my spare I should move and do a Video of it :)
I'm a big fan of ASRock, my last 6 boards have been theirs after years of only using ASUS after how impressed I was by the 287 itx board I got for my 4770K, and now they are the first boards I look for when I upgrade, but I still can't get the fact that their name sounds like a bad case of constipation :D
I bought a gigabyte board a few years ago that is 775 with agp. It’s a monster for win 98
This was my grandma's old pc until a couple of years ago. It had windows xp and a celeron d
Oh this video makes me sad :D
I bought one of these brand new for $50 from newegg in 2013 (yup, they still sold them that late). It worked amazing but I had a show stopper issue with the USB ports that I found out later was caused by my KVM. Unfortunately I had already sold it at that point. I did eventually find a similar gigabyte board on ebay but I had to pay substantially more for it.
Great Vid, thanks for the link to my fav AGP mb, can't wait 'til it arrives have all the bits from my previous board and will be running QX6700 - HIS HD3850 - OCZ ram cheers. BTW less than $100 delivered is a win for sure!
I was able to buy one of these boards new from Newegg, a Pentium E5800 from eBay, MSI Frozr cooler from Amazon, using Audigy 2 sound PCI card, and a GeForce 4Ti 4x agp, OCZ 60gb ssd that I’ve owned since new for years and years, all in a new Antec Sonota Atx case from Newegg. Best Win98SE computer I’ve ever used. Thanks Phil!
Love that board, had mine for a few years now. Works great if you want to do a hybrid dual boot setup for 98/XP. You can even setup your 2 installs to use different video cards. I had a 6800 Ultra for XP and a PCI 5200 for 98 to avoid driver issues. You just have to swap between the AGP/PCI init first in the bios based on what OS you want to use for the day. My only real complaint i had was that there just is not enough pci slots. I ended up putting it away in the closet because I kept wanting to add silly things to both my xp and 98 builds like a physx card, voodoo 2's, and multiple sound cards. Really wish it was a full size board with 6 slots. :(
Bit of reading suggests it achieves AGP compatibility by using the 865G chipset(!) - had no idea something as old as this designed for Northwood Pentium 4 chips could run much later dual and quad core chips - some great engineering from ASRock to make it happen.
ASRock's cursed engineering™
That blue+black+white color scheme looks extremely appealing.
I just found this video and am now scouring to find this board more companies need to do this!
This board might be hard to find. In general, good options for a windows 98 Retro PC with AGP are the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 platforms. For Pentium 4 stick with Intel chipset, but SIS is also good, for Athlon 64 VIA is decent, but avoid using the SATA ports.
@@philscomputerlab Huge thanks for the reply, I have a pentium 4 1.3 ghz and an HD 7000 64 MB that i want to have some fun with but finding a board and stuff for it locally is hard so this might be my next best option. Super great content btw my go to for retro
Very interesting! Probably about the best motherboard for AGP graphics card benching. But it's also interesting to see the difference between the old P4 CPUs and the more modern ones. I always thought those Pentium E series were more of a budget processor compared to the Core 2 Duo and Quad series, and seeing a 3.2GHz model is pretty impressive. They say MHz are more important for games, so I'm not sure whether you'd see much benefit running a C2D or C2Q at the faster FSB, at the expense of raw MHz. I dunno, I could be wrong. Who knows.
Yea all this Core 2 stuff, it's really something for a few years in the future :D Not quite retro yet, but this motherboard is real special case. AFAIK the main difference with the higher Core 2 Duo models are higher FSB, but also larger Cache. A E8600 for example should be quite a bit faster, but does it really matter for an AGP video card?
Oh, that remembers me my old and unstable pcchips p23g. That thing was the cheaper the previous owner could find, but it refused to die, most of its capacitors were leaked, some were really badly deformed, it was using a bad generic psu when i got it. The previous owner gave it to me in 2014.
I only had sometimes to drown it in alcohol to it give me video. I've used a decent psu, and i was going to relace the caps, but i had to give it to a friend that lost his pc (all burned down) in 2016.
It rocked a p4 630ht, and it had soemthing awesome, both ddr400 sockets and ddr2 sockets! 2 ddr400 and 2 ddr2.
I've used ddr400 for some time and then ddr2. It was one of these transition motherboards, it was limited to agp 8x (never tried it, i didnt had a agp card in that time), pentium d (and one or other c2d). It has sata (maybe 1) and ide. It was really a interesting board.
I remember some of the driver cd from Asrock motherboards of this era where also a video cd, there was a dat file (mpg1) with a video guide of how to build your new pc with your asrock motherboard
I have a couple older Radeon HD 4650 AGP 1Gig DDR3 cards. They are great cards, best AGP cards I have ever had.
Wait? A new 775 board that isnt damaged or cost a kidney? Loved!
I have the 775i65gv, which is basically the same board without AGP slot (it has an "AGI" slot which is compatible with AGP, but it uses the PCI bus and not all cards work there). Still, it's a very good board that works nicely with practically all Windows versions since 98 and even Linux. It makes for a perfect time-machine PC.
The celeron 420 is the older 65nm part (derived from the first core2 duos, but only singlecore and with reduced cache) whereas the E5800 is based on the wolfdale, which is 45nm variant of core2 cpus. Although the TDP listed for E5800 is twice higher, these CPUs are super power efficient, so no wonder that it consumes even less power than half-the speed and half-the core Celeron chip. And thank you for the video, good job as always. I'm running similar board, but with 865P chipset, fullATX, however does not support core2 duos and dualcore CPUs at all. So I'm stuck with 65nm cedar-mill P4 3.4GHz HT, but it's not as that bad. At the moment, I'm pairing it with Radeon X800XT PE which is okay for my needs. The good thing about "old" motherboard with "new" socket (LGA775) is the fact, that you can buy plenty of silent and high-quality coolers and have nicely quiet XP retro PC system.
this mobo is quite similar to my G41m-vs3 only the AGP, ram slots and the fact that mine has only 1 PCI slot makes it different
Considering the Pentium is clocked much higher, the power draw figures are extremely impressive! 64nm Cedar Mills are the best Pentium 4 CPUs, so that's a good choice. I gave up finding the 3.6 GHz model, seems super rare and expensive. The 3.4 is better value for sure.
PhilsComputerLab exactly, the 3.6GHz model is expensive. My 3.4GHz 651 model cost 4 euros (total 7 incl. shipping).
I'm so used to see budget focused 775 PC builds, it's nice to see a breath of fresh air with a focused "modern" build for it's time.
Good to finally see your opinion on this board. It is really the best i've owned for retro PCs, due to the flexibility it offers. I once had a PCCHIPS mobo with some VIA chipset on socket 478. It gave me too many headaches to count, even trying different CPUs (i thought my P4 with HT was the issue, but no, even relatively slow Celerons would cause it to BSOD), RAM and GPUs.
I was running an X6800 on mine, but i might have been pushing it too far or the CPU was more power hungry than normal ones (it's an Extreme Edition), as every time there was a heavy CPU load, the computer would reset. Thankfully my only other reasonably fast C2D CPU worked (E7600) and i've been a happy camper since. I think it's a power limitation and not an unstable OC as i've had that issue happen when trying a Pentium D 820, which is a power hungry chip (it's two P4 chips in one CPU package) and my E7600 still overclocked further does not give any issues (it runs at 290 MHz FSB for 3.33 GHz). It even has decent support for RAM sticks, i'm using some 512 MB OCZ sticks running at 193 MHz with 2-2-2-5 timings without issue.
My Geforce4 Ti 4200 is a beast as well, that card can run even faster than a 4600 on the core, and matches a 4400 on VRAM speed when overclocked. It can't do too taxing games like DOOM 3 or Crysis, but considering the main games i play on it are Descent Freespace, Quake II and some other older games, it's more than enough.
You might see some power draw differences between the Celeron and Pentium CPUs due to their architecture. The Celeron is a Conroe core CPU, with 65nm litography. The Pentium is the newer Wolfdale core, at 45nm litography. Just the die shrink provides some power savings, and it gave some 5-10% increase in IPC as well, aside from clocking higher.
Very interesting board. Might be hard to find one now but I'll look around. One thing about the Celeron 420 is that it is hugely overclockable. On my IP35 Pro I just switched the FSB from 800 to 1600 and it doubled the clock rate at stock volts and stock cooler to 3.2GHz. Even at 1066 it should give a nice boost on this board.
YOU SHOULD TEST THE "dual" range from ASROCK . i still use my P4 DUAL TODAY .
Driver 81.98 is what I use for my 6800 XT. I don't know why though but my board doesn't see my card i have to force install the driver. They also made a unofficial driver as well but I never tried it. My 6800 seems to run final fantasy XI pretty well. I also have my DVD rom and IDE hdd for windows 98 with the corsair liquid cooler and windows XP on the SATA connection.
All ive been working with is ddr2 and core 2 quads lately and 775 mbs... so awesome to see what it can do even now adays.. pretty good actually with a q9560 :)
I have been waiting a long time to see one of these on ebay. Finally one was listed in "new" condition for £60 so I snapped it up. Not sure what, if any, advantages it has over my Asus P5PE-VM board. But will be nice addition to my collection to play with.
The weirdest mainboard I've seen in a long time. DDR400 RAM, AGP and Support for Quad Cores if running at low timings...
Great Video Phil! :D
Take a look at the Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2, a Socket 775 motherboard with DDR and DDR2 slots, AGP and PCI-E slots (but al x4 mode) and with CPU support from Pentium 4 to Core 2 Quad
Oh god... Why....
Why ASRock.?? I sense a trend here
EDIT: For others to see: www.asrock.com/mb/via/4coredual-sata2/
Sweet Jayzus I found another one
www.asrock.com/mb/ULi/939Dual-SATA2/
This one with a CPU Port that's shaped like an AGP port!
WTF?!?!?! I had no idea about that one. It seems like this: www.asrock.com/mb/spec/upgrade.asp?Model=939cpu%20board was the "AGP" required. Basically a second mini-motherboard. Asrock was a crazy brand in the mid and late 2000's
Oscar Cozar Yeah, they made a few Socket 754/939 with modern (for 2009) chipsets, and also the opposite - they made AM2+ (iirc) board with nForce 3 and ULi combo xD
I quad boot one of these boards with 98se, xp pro, vista, and 7 ultimate, on 3 hard drives, with 3 optical drives (cd, dvd, and blue-ray burners), 2 gb ram, HIS 3850 agp, and core 2 extreme qx6800 and have been running that set up for probably 8 years with a few other extras like sound blaster audigy 2 zs with klipsch promedia 5.1 surround
Great Video, thanks a lot. I'm interested in building an Windows 98 Retro-PC and this board seems to be optimal for this purpose. What do you think about the build-quality of this board?
How to judge build quality?
I sold a few ones on ebay, pulled from old systems. They were revision 2.0, not 3.0, but that shouldn't matter too much. But it did made me wonder how tf did they go for like $50 on auction (starting price 0.01), this explains well.
I have this, still have yet to try it but planning XP/ ubuntu and maybe 98 installs with it. 2GB is still enough for modern linux and some room for older games, hl2/hl2dm and css etc.
Phil, this channel just gets better!
Again, I marvel a bit at your enthusiasm here, when it comes to brass tacks, as they say. I have to guess that you are also really good at the sales part. I'm really far from being a "seller of self" tho I'm proud of my old west word :) on ebay. If that's the other nine yards, that would help a lot of us, or give us an achievable foothold. Thank you.
I have the 2.0 revision of this board. The only difference appears to be support for the Wolfdale Pentiums with 800FSB. Mine is equipped with a Q6600 and that’s working flawlessly.
Just bought two from Newegg!
EscapeVelo For what do you even use this?
There are several more interested motherboards on VIA PT880 Pro (AGP+4xPCI-E) and Intel 915PL(PCI-E+xAGP(OC PCI) that works with vendors drivers on win98. Even ... PC/PCI connector exist at one of them (with mode). But I must admire that Asrock 775i65G R3.0 can be found easily and bought a new one what makes it the best today. I bought 2 of them.
Just for fun and if you can get a hold of one, try out the Celeron Dual core E3500 sticking to the 800mhz FSB. Would be interesting to see what the IPC is like on that. Great video as always mate.
This motherboard is nice... what suprised me along with that s775 and AGP, was the WIN98 support, figured something like this would be more suited for XP and above, great price too.
you can't go wrong with one of those Dual-Core E series, their high clock speeds are good for old games that relies on a single core yet they're power efficient and fast enough to run modern operating systems (i.e. dual booting W98SE for retro games and Lubuntu or even Ubuntu for basic daily use if paired with a capable enough gpu)
I've got the V2.0 version of the board and I absolutely love it, although apparently the 3.0 supports a lot less CPUs from what I've heard.
The CPU support lists are on the Asrock site. I had a quick look and REV 3 supports more CPUs, I would be surprised if it was the other way round.
Oh yeah looks like the website has updated now, back in 2014 it only had a few low clock rate CPUs on the V3.0 page (I had a spare Celeron 420 @ 1.6ghz at the time).
So a friend told me just to get a used V2.0 on ebay instead. It's listed now on the site, odd.
Thanks Phil! did not think to check Newegg. I've had my eyes on this board on eBay. I believe the 775i65g will be as fun to work with as my 939dual-sata2.
Yea sometimes I just Google products, you sometimes get lucky and find an actual shop selling a part.
@@philscomputerlab hi Phils this Is a good motherboard 775i65GV asrock
There must be an error in Asrock website, this motherboard actually does not support any Core 2 Quad processors, it does not power on. The Core 2 Duo E6700 or X6800 is the maximum CPU you can put in there. Plenty of power for Win98 or XP anyway which will not make any use of 4 cores.
I have R2.0 version of this board. I've read on some website that E5XXX series of processor may work on R2.0 board.
I can confirm my R2.0 with bios P3.30 and board revision 2.12 works with an E5500.
Great review for retro gaming.... i thought about getting this motherboard just for the halibit, but unfortunately, i waited too long, no longer available on newegg for cheap.
I have an E8600 sitting here that needs a home. Thanks for the vid, Phil!
the e8600 wouldnt work on that board
I would always have wanted it the other way round back in the day: A board with PCI Express and Socket 478 / DDR1 in order to only upgrade the graphics card.
Iv got a old one of these from early 2000's from a alienware i got
Looks like a great option. Shame the price has doubled since this video was posted! :)
Nice video Phil. Very nice brand new and cheap MB! Maybe it does run DOS! Very interesting!
Very similar to the Abit AS8 I had back in 2005 to 2012. That was an excellent board too with the same chipset and features, although mine had optical in and out for the audio chip. Mine lacked support for Core2 series CPU and that came weeks later in the very next motherboard version from Abit.
Awesome find for a 775 board with AGP. In the states, that board on ebay is not cheap. Seems to average about $70USD. What is cheap is the ASRock K8NF3-VSTA and still quite available. I got mine months ago for $15 with free shipping. They still sell for that price now. It is a 754 socket AMD board with an nForce 3 chipset but it does work in Windows 98. That is how I'm playing Half-Life with nGlide and A3D. Good info on the 6800GT. I've been wanting to try mine in Win98 but just haven't found the time.
I used to have an ABIT AS8 775 board with AGP, and that was an excellent board although was DOA the day I bought it! I had to send it back for repair before I could finally use it, but it lasted me seven years until I accidentally killed I assume, the BIOS chip with a failing PSU.
Why would you get it on ebay, when its still sold new on newegg? It's $50.
I guess I missed that, my mistake, was at work focused on many things. Still, nice catch, decent board but the AMD socket I got, quite cheap used. I paid extra for the Athlon 64 because it was new in box. Kinda wish I kept the box but I usually keep the modern stuff for display (although I would frame a Voodoo 5 box). It is rare that such a board is available from a big retailer. But watch out. Phil warned you. He might buy the lot!
That's cool. That looks to be a rare find. According to the last completed sale, one hasn't been listed since April and only four previous sales are listed. I bet it would work in Windows 98 with the nvidia drivers as my K8NF3-VSTA does. The audio doesn't but you wouldn't want it anyway. Good for a collector I'd say. As listed, it looks great for an uber Win98 setup but as a WinXP setup, unless you had a Radeon HD 3850 that needed a home, you could get a mobo/CPU/RAM combo with a PCIe slot and add a powerful PCI-e video card.
That board is pretty nice, same it dose not support the X6, but a phenom ii x4 on for win98 is overkill.
Hey Phil, great video, but i don't know if you can help me out here with my recent purchase of the Sound Blaster Audigy (original version)? i don't know if it supports wavetable synth as either onboard or as an extension or if it doesn't support it at all :/ i am new to this retro PC thing and i want to make a retro pc which can play both DOS games and run in win98 :) Thanks for the videos and insight, keep the great videos coming :)
I wanted to get more out of my E5800 (which my example can't overclock worth a darn, even 3.3GHz crashes), but apparently the multiplier control doesn't work. The multiplier adjustment setting in the BIOS only works when SpeedStep is disabled (which forces the multiplier to maximum anyways). I have a pair of Samsung TCCD-based sticks and wanted to stretch it's legs. Still way faster than my P4.
Some time ago I had the R2.0 of this motherboard (with the latest beta bios that allows using the same processors as the R3.0) and I used it in a frankenstein HTPC with a Radeon HD 4350 in XP, and later with a 3650 and Windows 7. It was a very geek and surprisingly usable HTPC, but in the end I exchanged the mobo for a more conventional one with PCIe slots so I can use more modern graphic cards and end up selling it.
😆 OK I'm hooked. Did it come in ATX form factor too?
I found lga 478 and 775 agp in my local garage sell, but now the hardest part is find the vga cards.
that test bench is nice - where did you get these?
Another drawback is that the standard intel cpu cooler doesn’t run slower than 2600rpm, so it’s very loud even though the temperature is below 50 degrees Celsius. Need to find me a solution to throttle that fan.
Bought 2 on your recommendation
Nice!
Never have I purchased an item so quickly, to get one before they are out of stock =) btw Phil, what video was it you showed of your testbench? The black one you are using in this video?
ua-cam.com/video/tn1LsMeysFE/v-deo.html
Hey, I'm looking to instal W10 the LTSC version on it...what do you think of that? Did you try installing a later Windows version than XP on it? I think W10 LTSC x86 would run decent on this mobo...don't know about the x64 version, i think it would be slower on this config than the x86 one...i also have a E5800, 2GB RAM, Gefore 7900 GS, WD Black 500GB on SATA...what do you think? Leave me a reply if you can. Thanks
I found a curious motherboard on a local listing which has both a PCI-E 16x slot and an AGP 8x slot. This one is from ASUS but there seems to be at least one from ASrock as well, but these are very uncommon since they where sort of transitional motherboards for those with AGP grphics cards panning to upgrade to PCI-E. However there was a compromise, the the PCI-E 16x slot runs at only 4x and only works with certain cards that support running at 4x, so I'm wondering which one is better and if it's worth picking up this mother knowing there are a good number of cards I won't be able to use. Do you have a motherboard like that?
Nice find! Usually those 775 agp motherboards only support a Pentium dual core at best.
HOLY CRAP! A brand new retro motherboard alternative, much like Texelec's products for IBM. Texelec even has their own Roland MIF-IPC clone!
Nice but small board. I still use an a8v-x with pci-e, 4gb ddr400, audigy2, 9800gtx+ 512mb with an x2 o/c'd to 2.6. It really shines in xp/win7 64bit.
where can I buy the motherboard chassis you have? good review!! I have that board but the 1.0 rev and I want to try a 6800 ultra and a 4650 I have.
i have a retro build with an Abit AN7 (nforce 2 ultra) and a geforce 6800 ultra, it works fine in win98se and xp - i guess your problem with win98 is the mainboard thats much newer than the graphics drivers used.
I just ordered one up on newegg. I think I might go Win XP since I have already built 4 Win 98 machines. 2 P4 builds and 2 Athlon 64 builds! I built a Win XP machine using a socket 775 Gigabyte motherboard with a Core2Quad Q9550 @2.8GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 500GB SATA Drive and a Geforce 8800 GTS video card. That's a serious powerhouse for a XP build but maybe this one could be a less powerful one to hit that mid 00s mark.
Yea apart from Crysis, and I haven't tested this game yet, any XP era game will work great. As for graphics card, man we are spoilt for choice! A 8800 series card is a great pick.
Shut up and take my money 😂
An I with my Lenovo Classmate Lenovo :(
Really interesting they'd make this.
Using up old parts maybe? I bet somewhere there's a warehouse full of AGP/PCI slots etc.
I have a big box of Foxconn PCI connectors sitting in my basement. About 500 of them, brand new. I needed at some point in the past a couple of them to fix a motherboard, and this is the only way I could get my hands on them at the time. They didn't even cost a lot, I think I paid about $20 on ebay. I used what I needed, and the rest are sitting there since. All NIB.
Or maybe they were thinking of us in the future. :)
My records:
Board: Asrock 775i65G R3.0
Processor: Pentium E5800 3.2 GHz
Memory: Kingston KHX3200ULK2/512 (2x256 MB)
Graphics: Geforce 6800 GT AGP DDR3 350/500 MHz
Windows 98 SE, Forceware 81.98
3DMark2001 SE: 29072
3DMark2000: 39879
3DMark99: 38829
3dfx.pl/public_html/yabbfiles/Attachments/775i65g_1.jpg
-----------------------------
Board: Asrock 775i65G R3.0
Processor: Pentium E5800 3.2 GHz@4.3 GHz (15x288 MHz) (1.45v-1.5v VID5+VSS)
Memory: Kingston KHX3200ULK2/512 (2x256 MB) 200@230 MHz
Graphics: Geforce 7900 GS AGP DDR3 450/660@550/750 MHz
Windows 98 SE, Forceware 82.69 not official
3DMark2001 SE: 40865
3dfx.pl/public_html/yabbfiles/Attachments/3DMark2001SE_7900.jpg
Great build! Can’t wait to try 7800 gs on this board!
Awesome video Phil, just bought this MB and an E5800 because of this vid and i am really happy but retested my own and TDP doesn't match,
9:56 it looks like yours is working at 1.6GHz (100Mhzx16). At 3.2Ghz Idle is 59W and Load 85-90W (QuakeII Vsync OFF), even with my GPU(9600XT 22W TDP) vs Your's (Geforce 2 GTS 33W TDP).
When i downclock to 1.6GHz then results are comparable.(my PSU is 85%+). Don't get me wrong I appreciate your work and I do not cry about a few Watt's ;)
I'm just curious.
Is this under Windows 98 or XP?
Windows 98SE
Yea not sure what's going on.
It seems to be GPU driver, on Linux and a raw Windows98SE it's 50W, but straight after install driver goes up again (Catalyst 6.2)
anyway, i downclocked CPU to 1.52Ghz because i get exactly the same fps like on 3.2GHz in 1280x1024 (9600XT) :)
Curious question, how is the support for DOS gaming with Intel Extreme Graphics II (up to quake I & II)? I guess that there is no drivers for hardware accelerated 3D graphics, but how does it handle SVGA / VGA / EGA and CGA? is it possible to run most games on integrated graphics (and instead use software rendering for early 3D games).... I'm actually keen on buying this board since I have both DDR memory and 775 processors laying around. Although getting a PCI or AGP graphics card isn't that much of a hassle it would be cool to run the computer without it.
I believe it's sold out now.
we still have it in stock in Sweden. :)
www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?p=1936096
Funny thing is that i was entertaining picking up an intel x48 board for my q6600. However, i found that while it had pci express and still had an ide slot, it would need ddr3. Rendering my ddr2 useless. The paradox is that anything older becomes a heck of a lot more expensive.
One thing I'm curious about is, how does this board do for supporting upper memory blocks? It seems with my limited testing, most every motherboard after ~2003 has hardware mapped into the upper memory area which makes playing a lot of DOS games under Windows with sound wonky at best.
For example, I have a system where Monster Bash works for me with MS-DOS mode but only adlib audio. In Windows 98SE, I get no audio at all. Perhaps it may have more to do with using a PCI sound card? Most everything else works though consistently and Monster Bash specifically mentions requiring EMS (for which I'm not 100% sure is working properly) for Sound Blaster effects.
Of course, the system is fast enough to run DOSBox which wholly side-steps the issue, but that precludes any efforts to underclock. Regardless, I've very much appreciated your very exhaustive of sound and graphics cards for Windows 98. It has been very informative.
For DOS gaming I will always recommend a system with ISA slots! PCI sound cards are always a compromise.
This is the chief reason I have a Windows 98SE/DOS P5A-B system. However, exploring DOS gaming in Windows XP with VDMSound I've become aware of the limitation of requiring EMS emulation for many games, and that also tends to require upper memory to function (EMS Magic will work at the expense of allocating the 64KB EMS frame in the first 640KB, which obvious results in many games not loading). So, I'm still curious about the upper memory block situation, if you're inclined to test for that in this or future examples. I don't think it's nearly as much of an issue on SS7 boards.
Windows 98 and DOS gaming seems to always be a matter of compromise. Thankfully, though, you've sorted out a lot of the details if one wants to make a few separate rigs.
I will definitely check out DOS compatibility at some point, the BIOS has some nice options for slowing down the CPU, but you can also disable the L1 Cache and other tricks.
I have 2 of these... I don't know which revision though. I have them in boxes not utilized. So what's so incredible about them?
socket 775 in combination with agp... and support for core 2 duo / quad cpus.
Would love to see a highest performing Windows 98 SE system. Stuff like a SATA controller, Pentium 4 3.8GHz, 6800 Ultra, 1GB DDR2 667MHz Dual Channel. Reason why, is because I want these parts, but if something has conflicts, I might not want to get these. I'm also having a friend build it for me, so I don't want him getting stuff that doesn't work with each other. I don't really see a video or a forum with said specs either.
If you ever get that 6800GT running on Windows 98, would you be willing to make a follow-up video?
I might use it again in future projects, trying newer drivers, but if I ever do a dedicated review on the 6800 GT, I will be using Windows XP of course.
Could you tell us what is the "PC Case" that you use to run these setups? I really like the open setup making it easy to add/remove components
High Speed PC
Im buying one, asrock are leaps ahead of any other company
I just bought 2 of these for US$6 in my country, mine are version r2.0
Lucky :)
I wish someone would make a modern BTX motherboard so I could update my LGA775 Dell Optiplex PC's. With all the old business PC's still being used for gaming and everyday computing, I think they would sell millions of units. Thanks for the video Phil!
Nah they wouldn't. BTX is long dead. Get a hacksaw and install an ATX backplate to upgrade if you want something newer. Otherwise stick with that Core2Quad until it dies. Then upgrade to a completely new system.
The BTX form factor is dead, but that doesn't change the fact that there are millions of them still being used. Believe me, people would buy a modern BTX mobo in a heartbeat. It's not really about the backplate, I've already cut one out of a 780 to install a 980 mobo (both BTX). It's the reverse placement of the PCIe slots, RAM slots, and CPU socket that screws everything up. Unless you make more room with an ITX mobo in a SFF, or a mATX in a Mini Tower the layout is just too screwed up when you have to account for the PSU placement and hard drive/ disc drive placement. It could be done but it's definitely not worth the work involved.
What about cases? Are BTX cases still made?
As far as I know, there was never any non-OEM BTX cases produced because there was never any non-OEM motherboards produced. BTX was all Dell, HP and maybe a couple other OEM's, it was never popular enough to go mainstream. But there are quite a few cases that allow you to install the motherboard tray reversed so you can have the PC open on the left side like a BTX PC. That configuration will place the ATX mobo upside down where the PCIe slots are at the top and the cpu is at the bottom. A BTX board would be perfect for this design. But I'm talking more about upgrading old OEM PC's with a new BTX mobo. Either way I think their would be a significant market for a modern BTX motherboard. Sorry for the long response!
Pretty nice, I think I will get one to do an XP dual boot machine. Looking into it, it's a bummer this board forces a 3:2 divider on your RAM with 1066 FSB CPU's, as ~355 MHz DDR1 kind of sucks for any of those Core 2's. Physical pin mods won't change the FSB from 1066 to 800 either with this particular board.
i had a 775i65gv with a fx6200 agp gpu, 1gb ram, p4 3.2ghz my very first pc
It is nice universal motherboard. You can install windows 98, use agp video card, you can use windows xp, you can use even windows 7 64-bit with 64-bit processors. It even can run crysis. But I doubt that I need this motherboard. Because if I need fast PC - I will go modern PC. And I don't like windows 98. The only reason for win98 is Aureal a3d 2.0 support. MS DOS support is weak on this motherboard - there is not any ISA slots. So you limited to PCI sound cards. This motherboard is not retro and not modern. It is a compromise
Compromise it's a about of Windows 10's builds without a Maximum depends (as of 512GB RAM)
Lol the Celeron 420, I used to use one back in the day then upgraded to a E1200 or something like that then to a E6400. Was a cash strapped college student back in the day :s
Why did you compare it against an Athlon 1000? It seems to me that an Athlon 64 with a VIA chipset (that can run Win98) would be a better comparison.
Hi Hhil i love you vids and i made an old parts retro pc but i have a problem so can you at least tell me what the problem is?
So the pc cannot recognize the usb keyboard and when i turn it on it says CMOS Checksum Error-Defaults Loaded.So What is the problem?
Before we get a price explosion. The AsRock ConRoe865PE (4GB Ram Max, 4 Slots) is basically the same board (even better, it supports up to 4GB Ram) but without integrated graphics.
PE > G (100-300Mhz vs 66-300Mhz (real about 72-299 depends of all hardware) FSB. But really hard to find PE.
hmm if the PE got 100-300mhz FSB vs 66-300 then the G is better for retro, because you can use it with slower cpu's
EDIT: Ah forget what i wrote, you mean the ram speed. xD
I mean AsRock ConRoe865PE with E6300 can 6x72=432Mhz (6x100=600Mhz stable) up to 7x299=2093Mhz without any mode.
Ah ok, you was talking about the multi and fsb.
I was confused :)