ASrock 775Dual-880Pro is the first non Intel based chipset board we tested that runs the Pentium4  LGA775 Dual Core processors. To start off with, the ASrock 775Dual-880Pro is one of the new boards that is under the DUAL range of boards. ASrock 775Dual-880Pro comes with 3 DUALS. The first is that it is the first non Intel chipset board based on VIA PT880Pro which supports the Intel Dual Core processors. The second is that it supports 2 memory types. Users with existing DDR400 memory need not buy the extra DDR2 memory to tap the power of Dual Core P4. Thirdly, this board comes with 2 graphics interfaces, a AGP 8x and a PCIe. Although the PCIe interface is a PCIe x4, it is quite sufficient for most tasks. The AGP 8x slot allows one to use your older expensive AGP 8x cards like my ATi Radeon 9800XT with ease. If you wish, you can connect two monitors to each card and you have a surround video system with 4 monitors. That might be a solution for the stock brokers. The chipsets are relatively cool to touch under test runs.

Compared to the 955X chipset or the Intel NF4 SLI edition, the PT880Pro/8237 does have its shortcomings. On this board, you don't get the SATA II, GbE interfaces. Well, that could be solved though by introducing a PCI based GbE or SATA II card. It might be a lot better if a PCIe x 1 slot is available for such future upgrades.

Just like any ASrock board, they came with minimal stuff which is good enough to power up your system. At least you don't have to pay more for a lot of gimmicky stuff which might not come useful. Performance wise, this board has pretty good processing speed when compared the 955x. In fact, in most of the dual core tests, the board is as fast as the 955x and NF4 Intel Ed.

The board has some basic overclocking features with adjustments of the AGP voltage, CPUCLK, ASync settings, ram timing adjustments. You can check the gallery for more details. In our tests, we can o/c the board to 230MHz FSB x 14 with RAM running at DDR2-460. When it comes to PCIe graphics tests, it seems a bit slower, that is probably due to the PCIe x4 instead of the x16 on other chipsets.

Overall, we did not have any issues with the board in our 4 rounds of tests using DDR, DDR2 with AGP and PCIe graphics cards. If you need a stable, cheap board that supports older DDR, AGP and upgradeable to PCIe and DDR2, this board is just right choice for you at US57 (Check pricing link below).

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Pros

• 8 USB 2.0 ports
• Dual Memory type supported DDR / DDR2 selection
• Dual Core support especially 820D
• Dual AGP 8x and PCIe graphics interface
• Surround video

Cons

• Limited memory up to 2GB for DDR or DDR2
• No 1394
• No SATA II
• No Wi-Fi
• No GbE

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.