ASRock 775XFire-eSATA2 Motherboard Review :: Setup and Usage

The first step in installing any motherboard is to make sure everything that is supposed to be in the box is there. After mounting the board on our open-air test station, I proceeded to install a memory stick, the CPU and the video card to start was is called First boot to see if the board POSTs. At this point, I ensure that the system has no problems with the limited components and set the BIOS to setup the HDDs in RAID mode and Primary Graphics Adapter to PCI Express.

LGA-775

Once the board booted, I shut the computer down, installed the other memory stick, the hard disk drives, and the DVD-ROM drive and proceeded to install Windows XP and the test software we use for benchmarking purposes. I always use a fresh install of XP with SP2 to ensure that the boards are tested on an even keel. Keeping in mind that the board only supports up to 533 MHz DDR2 memory, the performance is ok for the price point that the board is targeted at.

Dual Channel DDRII 533

Normally I install the regular 3.8 GHz Pentium 670, install the drivers, run the benchmarks and stability testing then install a Core 2 Duo E6700 to test compatibility with the new Core 2 CPUs. With the 775XFire-eSATA2 not supporting them, I chose to forgo this.

With the release of Microsoft Vista last month, I decided to give the new Operating System a whirl on the 775XFire-eSATA2 board. Vista installation is easy as pie, as there is no need to install a SATA driver before installing the Operating System. After installing Vista I checked ASRock's website and found drivers for the Realtek soundcard available for the new operating system.