ASRock ALiveDual-eSATA2 Review Conclusion

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ASRock ALiveDual-eSATA2 Review Conclusion
Bluetooth 19 Dec 2007

Conclusion

ASRock never fails to surprise me. Old chipset with new features and support for the latest processors. Based on the Defunct ULI 1695 and old NF3 250 chipset, ASRock has created another Dual series product which find a niche market in of it's own.

The ASRockDual-eSATA2 is this latest creation from ASRock which finds it's way to fame with acclaimed products like the 939Dual-SATA2 and 939Dual-VSTA which still has a strong following right till today.

In our tests, we do not see major performance problems with the board when paired up with a PCIe card or AGP card. As NF3-250 is an old AGP chipset, drivers are no longer updated to support newer products. All NVIDIA based AGP cards should not have any issues after installing the GART driver available on the CDROM and Forceware driver. According to ASRock, if you use a Single Core, both ATI and NVIDIA AGP cards can work on the board. If you use a Dual Core CPU, it only works with NVIDIA AGP cards. Please refer to this page for more installation instructions.

The board also comes with other new features other than supporting Phenom X4. They include the Jmicon SATAII, eSATA port, WIFI header, 7.1ch HDA, PCIe x1 GbE.

The BIOS on this board is very similar to the old 939Dual-SATA2. (Click here to see BIOS Screen shots). As we are using a X2 5000+ on this board, we are able to shift the CPU multiplier upwards from 13x to 16x givnig us 3.2GHz (X2 5000+ runs at 13x200=2.6GHz). That is done by setting Vcore to 1.35v and the rest remains the same. As for the max HTT, using a multiplier of 5 or 6, the maximum we can get the system to POST is around 300MHz. Anything beyond that results in no POST.

When it comes to packaging, ASRock always keep it simple. A multilanguage manual with simple instructions is enclosed. Other than the manual, it is just the CDROM, 2 SATA cable and IDE + floppy cable. USB External bracket is not provided.

Overall, the ASRock ALiveDual-eSATA2 is definitely a nice to have board if you do not intend to throw your old AGP card (please check our forums if your AGP card is compatible).

Discuss

Pros

eSATA
AGP and PCIe support
Phenom Support
GbE

Cons

Passive cooled; chipsets are a bit too hot
Certain ATi AGP cards might have compatibility issues
NO PCIe Gen 2

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

Category	Score
Performance	9 / 10
Features	8 / 10
Ease Of Installation	8 / 10
Overclocking Features	8 / 10
Documentation	8 / 10
Packaging	7 / 10
Cost / Performance	9 / 10
Overall Rating :	8.1 / 10

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