ASRock 775Dual-VSTA & AM2V890-VSTA

Moving onto the ASRock AM2V890-VSTA, the memory supported by this motherboard is DDR2-800/667. The maximum memory capacity supported is 8GB. In the lower right hand corner of the motherboard are two USB 2.0 headers, two IDE ATA-133, two Serial ATA 2.0, and the BIOS chip. The Southbridge used on the AM2V890-VSTA is the 8237A, which is the same as the 775Dual-VSTA. No heatsink of any form is placed atop the Southbridge.

The expansion slot with this motherboard is one PCI Express x16, one PCI Express x4, one PCI Express x1, and three PCI slots. The Chipset covered by the passive aluminum heatsink is the VIA K8T890 CF. The AMD Socket AM2 processors supported by the motherboard are AMD Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64, and Sempron processors. The motherboard does support Cool 'n' Quiet, Untied Overclocking, and Hyper Transport Technology. Other ASICs with the AM2V890-VSTA is the Realtek ALC888 audio codec and VIA PHY VT6103. Both motherboards also offer a HDMI_SPDIF header.

Today at Phoronix we do not have performance results to deliver for the either the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA or AM2V890-VSTA due to compatibility problems with Fedora Core 5. These issues largely lay with the VIA disk controller, and they will hopefully be fixed in time for Fedora Core 6. Upon these motherboards functioning properly under Fedora Core, we will deliver the performance results for these two budget motherboards. We leave this preview today with a few shots from inside the ASRock AM2V890-VSTA BIOS.