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ASrock Conroe945G-DVI

rkwok

By rkwok,
in OSx86 10.4 (Tiger)

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~Neo
~Neo
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Yep, I took chance on this board, but it turned out to be great value.

 

I aggree! Its a great board, but not for overclocking (my pentium D). You cannot set the VCore, so if you really want to overclock (a Pentium D) then buy another board.

 

Quartz Extreme and Core Image, the software modules that takes advantage of hardware graphics card.

 

Sorry but I have to correct you... They are the hardware acceleration components for OS X...

Just take a look at this: Core Image and Quartz Extreme

 

I have IDE hdd, SATA hdd, and IDE(atapi) DVD drive. They all work great.

 

Yep, I can confirm this! It both works great.

 

Hi NeoPheus, Nice setup and Xbench number, welcome to the club.

 

Thanks! I really like this board but I want to OC my CPU... So if you want to OC here is a link how to increase the core voltage: click me

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Infamous
Infamous
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rainman01 - That's exactly why it's called PCIe LOCK. So, when you want to overclock your CPU, you just lock everything and PCIe set at 100 (mostly). Everything's locked, you can raise PCIe or lower it, you still adjust only the speed of PCIe, whenever it's 80, 90, or 120.

There was a problem on previous Intel chipsets with this lock, it didn't work good, but 945G is confirmed working.

When southbridge (which includes SATA,USB,PCI) is overlocked, all these peripherals and their frequency is overclocked too. Default USB frequency is 48mhz. I've checked USB frequency at PCIe 117mhz and it's still 48mhz. When PCIe is not locked (synchronised to FSB), i get over 55mhz USB. Same for other southbridge peripherals.

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aberracus
aberracus
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im using another brand of 945 for my conroe, the Gigabyte ga-945-sp3, with an extra firewire via card and a realteke lan, rght now i have FSB 325 and PCIe in 110 and my last xbench with these setting is 147.15, WITH HDs, i have been in 2.8gz with 115 PCIe and FSB around 350, but i was having some issues, got frecuent light blue screens (like the one prior to the reboot or turnoff) when i let my comp idle, i suppose it was some kind of problem with my asus x1600xt and the pcie express port running in 115, i downed the pcie setting until the problem was less frecuent, and now with 110 pice it never happens... any of you know about overclocking enough to confirm these?

 

Thanks!

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rainman01
rainman01
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rainman01 - That's exactly why it's called PCIe LOCK. So, when you want to overclock your CPU, you just lock everything and PCIe set at 100 (mostly). Everything's locked, you can raise PCIe or lower it, you still adjust only the speed of PCIe, whenever it's 80, 90, or 120.

There was a problem on previous Intel chipsets with this lock, it didn't work good, but 945G is confirmed working.

When southbridge (which includes SATA,USB,PCI) is overlocked, all these peripherals and their frequency is overclocked too. Default USB frequency is 48mhz. I've checked USB frequency at PCIe 117mhz and it's still 48mhz. When PCIe is not locked (synchronised to FSB), i get over 55mhz USB. Same for other southbridge peripherals.

 

Infamous - Thanks for that reply, that clears it up a bit! Now I have a new question:

 

According to this diagram from the review of the conroe945g at Anandtech, the PCIe graphics is connected to the northbridge but there is another PCIe bus connected to the ICH7 southbridge. So when you overclock the PCIe to 117mhz are you overclocking just a PCIe graphics or both? Also, both the IDE and SATA ports are DIRECTLY attached to the southbridge, so they shouldn't be overclocked unless the ICH7 is overclocked (ie, it shouldn't have anything to do with the PCIe clock), is that right?

 

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mother...i/intel945G.png

intel945G.png

 

Thanks so much. This thread is awesome!

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rainman01
rainman01
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BTW, I found this PCI card that has BOTH Firewire and gigabit ethernet (plus USB 2.0), for those of us who want both but want to save a PCI slot. The Conroe945g only has 2! It has the RTL8169S-32 for LAN, which should work with OSX. I think the NEC D720101GJ is for the USB, which I have no idea whether it would work under osx or not. No info on the firewire chipset on the vendor's webpage, but other websites lists it as a TI OHCI v1.1 compliant chip.

 

Any thoughts? I wonder if it will work...

 

It's currently $24.45

firewire lan card?

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Infamous
Infamous
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rainman - Yes, southbridge runs at its default speed when you lock the PCIe at some frequency.

 

I'm not completly sure about the GMA950 chip though. Logically, this graphics chip must be connected to the northbridge, since it shares the system RAM and uses it. And only northbridge is connected directly to memory. I would say setting PCIe at 117 have no impact to GMA chip. And ADD2 bundled DVI card in PCIe slot should really handle over 125mhz IMO, because it's only DVI output chip, there's no sensitive GPU on the card.

 

And the interesting thing is, if you overclock your RAM, you can determine it's not fully stable overclocked by the screen corruption ;) Because the GMA uses the system memory... That's what happens at high memory speeds on my system.

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Tecnoworld
Tecnoworld
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Infamous: thanks for the info! This evening (or at most tomorrow) I should be able to build my system! I have all the components (E6400, asrock mobo, 2GB MDT 667 cas4 memories), so I'll let you know.

 

One question: if I set PCIe to asynch 117 (so everything else is at default) and FSB at 350Mhz (the E6400 should be able to handle 2800Mhz flawlessy), at what frequency does the memory operate? 667Mhz or 700Mhz? Thanks.

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Infamous
Infamous
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Tecnoworld: If you leave the memory speed to "Auto", it will run at 700mhz. I would say all 667 RAMs can handle 700mhz without any problem, even without relaxing their timings.

 

Anyway since those you gonna have are CL4, i would recommend setting the nearest lower memory ratio and trying CL3. That is very fast.

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Infamous
Infamous
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For all overclockers: THE MEMORY FREQUENCY OPTIONS IN THE BIOS DO NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL MEMORY SPEEDS WHEN OVERCLOCKING ! THOSE ARE DIVIDING RATIOS...

 

Possible ratios on this board are:

 

Auto (1:1)

400mhz (4:3)

533mhz (1:1)

667mhz (4:5)

 

fisrt number in the ratio represents FSB, second number is the memory speed.

 

e.g.

 

if you have 350FSB and set

 

400mhz memory option, it runs 350/4 * 3 = 262 (DDR so * 2) = 525mhz (most CL4 667 memory can run this speed at CL3, great for Core 2 Duo)

533mhz option will give you 700mhz (1:1) - 350/ 1 * 1 = 350(*2) = 700

667mhz option will give you 875mhz (4:5) - 350/4 * 5 = 437,5(*2 DDR) = 875

 

-----

 

another example with FSB 320:

 

400mhz ratio: 320/4 * 3 = 240(*2) = 480mhz memory

533mhz ratio: 320/1 * 1 = 320(*2) = 640mhz memory

667mhz ratio: 320/4 * 5 = 800mhz memory

 

----

 

example with stock 266mhz FSB:

 

400mhz ratio: 266/4 * 3 = 200(*2) = 400mhz memory

533mhz ratio: 266/1 * 1 = 266(*2) = 533mhz memory

667mhz ratio: 266/4 * 5 = 333(*2) = 667mhz memory

 

so that's why these ratios are shown in the bios like this. They are the result for 266mhz FSB - STOCK SPEED.

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Bamboo
Bamboo
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I've been reading this thread for a few days and my ASRock ConRoe945-DVI is already ordered, but I don't understand why you need to downgrade the GMA support to 10.4.5's GMA900 series in order for the onboard GMA950 to work.

 

If I've read the docs correctly, ASRock's GMA 950 devid is 2772 and the Mini/MB uses 27a2 (the mobile version of the chip). But should'nt it just be a matter of changing the devid in the kext from 27a2 to 2772? What does downgrading the drivers to GMA950's performance?

 

Sorry to be a bit off-topic from the what is discussed right now on this topic, but I think I'm on topic enough for the subject and I don't reckon we need more 945G-related threads.

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Infamous
Infamous
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Bamboo, I believe that the driver is universal. My graphics card is recognised as GMA 950 in System Profiler, so (in my opinion), the performance isn't degraded.

 

10.4.5 already had support for GMA 950 (Mac Minis as you've written), and that's the driver we use.

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sincewednesday
sincewednesday
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Thanks to all of the great information in this thread, I put together my new ASRock system yesterday.

 

Starting from the 10.4.6 install, I did not need to install the GMA900 patch for the GMA950 to work (QE/CI via DVI). I discovered this accidentally trying to find out what was causing the first-time boot glitches (strange polygons everywhere) -- so I kept reinstalling with less patches, and it turns out the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live USB patch was causing it! So, no 5.1 sound for now.

 

Everything else works great - SATA, video, sound via Azalia, Firewire via PCI, and network via PCI.

 

Thanks everyone!

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TopazBar
TopazBar
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Posted
Thanks to all of the great information in this thread, I put together my new ASRock system yesterday.
Great! Enjoy it and share any new info you discover.
Starting from the 10.4.6 install, I did not need to install the GMA900 patch for the GMA950 to work (QE/CI via DVI). I discovered this accidentally trying to find out what was causing the first-time boot glitches (strange polygons everywhere) -- so I kept reinstalling with less patches, and it turns out the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live USB patch was causing it! So, no 5.1 sound for now.
Ah-ha, good job (it always make me feel good to fix something myself).
Everything else works great - SATA, video, sound via Azalia, Firewire via PCI, and network via PCI.

 

Thanks everyone!

BTW, what processor are you using?

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