ASRock 775Dual-880Pro

Immediately above the PCI slots is the PCI Express and AGP slot. These two interfaces are possible due to VIA's Universal Graphics Interface which is integrated into the Chipset. Luckily, these slots are free from really interfering with any of your system memory slots. Although the PCI Express graphics slot is rated for x4, it continues to be compatible with PCI Express x16 graphics cards such as the NVIDIA 6600/6800 or ATI's X850XT. The PCI Express compatibility on this board is possible because PCI-E specifications state that devices can auto-negotiate lanes, however, later on in this article we'll see the performance changes due to the x4 status. The AGP slot on the other hand is designed for AGP 8x with 1.5V cards. For both the AGP and PCI Express slots, ASRock has a short list of compatible cards in both the included documentation and on their website. In front of the AGP slot is the Super I/O controller. Unlike the DDR and DDR2 slots that can't be used simultaneously, the AGP and PCI Express slots can be used concurrently due to VIA's DualGFX Express.

Unlike the VIA Southbridge that doesn't require an active or passive heatsink, the Northbridge most definitely does. On top of the VIA PT880 Pro Northbridge is a fairly large aluminum passive heatsink. Compared against previous generation heatsinks used by ASRock, the one employed on the 775Dual-880Pro has a much greater surface area for improved heat dissipation. Next to the Northbridge is the 20-pin motherboard power connector. With the PCI Express support and also dual-core CPU support, its surprising ASRock still managed to engineer a 20-pin connector rather than 24-pin, but again this is a budget motherboard.

Looking in the near vicinity of the LGA775 CPU socket, we found the board to be surprisingly free of any possible obstructions. In fact, around the CPU socket was entirely free of major electrical components that can cause troubles when mounting some heatsinks. In the upper left hand corner of the CPU socket, is the 4-pin P4 power connector while to the right of the socket is the 4-pin CPU fan connector. Intel's Dual Core Extreme Edition/Pentium D/Pentium 4/Celeron D processors are supported by the motherboard with a 1066/800/533MHz FSB and also EM64T capabilities.

At the rear of the motherboard is the parallel port, 10/100 LAN, six audio, four USB2.0, one serial, and two PS/2 (keyboard and mouse) ports. Overall, the ASRock 775Dual-880Pro motherboard was incredibly similar to its predecessors in some ways, while in other aspects we've seen significant improvements in the board layout and components.