This is probably the first board in the world that allows an upgrade option from Socket A to Socket 754 through an upgrade card. This is in contrary to the other offerings from ASrock which offers only Socket 754->Socket 939 either through an upgrade card (K8Upgrade-760GX) or a dual socket design (Combo-Z) . This board is centred around the VIA KT880 chipset which pairs up with VIA 8237 South Bridge. Since it uses a north south pair, it uses the K8 port bridge to pair up the K8 north bridge K8T800 with the onboard VIA VT8237 south bridge. This is probably the 2nd board that takes advantage of such a north South bridge design which I feel is really innovative.

When this board was first announced, many users speculated on the performance of such a design. Well, we have posted our findings and found that the K7 (AXP 3200+) board's performance is not that bad after all considering it runs exactly at 200.00MHz FSB. When we paired it up with the K7Upgrade card and installed a Socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+, we cleared the CMOS and found that there are more options in the same BIOS (dual function for Socket A and Socket 754 thru bridge card).

The BIOS options available are quite similar to that of ASrock K8 boards. In the BIOS, there are options of ASync 166,133,100 operation. HTT can be set and FSB ranges up to 300MHz. If you use the K7 processor, there is a multiplier control on the mainboard which you must use jumpers to set. For K8, the multiplier option is seen in the BIOS but it is greyed out and there is no way to adjust it. We only managed to push the 3400+ to 218Mhz x 11

Just like the Combo or Upgrade series of boards, there are lot of jumpers on board which needs to be adjusted to indicate if you are using K7 or K8. This can be quite confusing as the jumper does not indicate where is pin 1,2,3. It would be good if ASrock could include clearer instructions on the locations of the jumpers or design it to auto detect the upgrade card and switch to K8 mode.

In terms of features, this is the first board that supports both Socket A and Socket 754. It also features AGP8X, Hybrid Booster, SerialATA 1.5Gb/s, RAID 0,1,JBOD, SATA_HDD, USB2.0, 5.1channel Audio, 10/100 Ethernet LAN. We have news from ASrock that a new upgrade card is in plans so that you can upgrade this board to use a Socket 939 processor in the near future. The upgrade card can be purchase separately when available.

Overall, an upgradeable board with good performance and price. We give it our Innovation Award.

Suggested Retail Price US43.35 (Newegg)

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Pros

• Socket A with upgrade option to S754 thru daughter card
• 8 X USB 2.0 

Cons

• No IDE RAID
• Too many dip switches

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

Product Innovation