ASRock 775Dual-915GL

Board Layout:

Beginning our expedition around the ASRock 775Dual-915GL in the upper right hand corner of the blue PCB is the Winbond Super I/O controller and BIOS chip. Also running along the edge of the PCB is the FDD connector in addition to a single IDE ATA-100 connector and 3-pin chassis fan header. Running along all of these onboard components are the two DDR memory slots. Due to the motherboards micro-ATX form factor, there is no DDR2 DIMM slots like on the 775Dual-880Pro. These DDR-400/333 slots support a maximum of 2GB non-ECC memory.

Also due to the motherboard's small size almost immediately below the system memory slots is the Southbridge, which happens to be Intel's ICH-6. The ICH-6 Southbridge provides connectivity for the four SATA 1.5Gb/s, onboard Intel HD (High Definition) audio, single channel IDE ATA-100, and eight USB2.0 ports. Providing the passive cooling needs for the Southbridge is a small ASRock aluminum heatsink. Running along the bottom edge of the motherboard are the four SATA connectors, front panel header, and two USB2.0 headers. Moving to the back of the motherboard is an AMR slot along with two standard PCI slots and then ASRock's patented AGI Express. As we had brought up in the 775-Dual880 review, AGI Express allows for compatibility with most PCI Express x16 and AGP 8x graphics cards. A list of compatible cards can be found on ASRock's website and in the installation guide. However, when running a PCI Express graphics card its limited to x4 speeds. Unfortunately, no PCI Express x1 slots are used on the 775Dual-915GL. Filling the void between the expansion slots and the end of the PCB is the CMOS battery with CMOS clear jumper, Realtek ALC850 Codec, and Realtek RTL8100C 10/100 ethernet ASIC.

Moving up to the Northbridge is Intel's i915GL Chipset that provides the DDR connectivity as well as PCI Express x16 and LGA-775 CPU support. The passive Northbridge heatsink digresses from ASRock's usual petite heatsinks. The 775Dual-915GL Chipset heatsink features 11 aluminum fins for thermal dissipation. The heatsink is secured to the PCB in all four corners. To the left of the Northbridge is a portion of the power circuitry surrounding the 20-pin ATX motherboard connector and PDW Marthel W83195BR-119 clock generator. Looking around the LGA-775 CPU socket area, the motherboard is free of any major obstructions that could obstruct the stock heatsink installation or any after-market HSFs or waterblocks. To the right of the socket area is the 4-pin CPU fan connector while to the right of the socket is the 4-pin ATX P4 power connector. The processors supported by the ASRock 775Dual-915GL are Pentium 4/Celeron CPUs with 800/533MHz FSB. Also supported is Intel's EM64T.

Moving to the I/O panel, at the rear are two PS/2, one printer, one VGA, four USB2.0, one 10/100 ethernet, and six audio connectors. Providing the onboard video support is Intel's GMA900 powered by the Intel i915GL. The video memory is dynamically allocated depending upon the total system memory and can vary from 32MB to 224MB.