asrock 775 dual VSTA: will Nvidia 7950gx2 work?

Asrock is a wholly owned subsidiary of Asus, since my newserver doesn't list
any
asrock newsgroups I'm posting this question here. I know this motherboard
(the
Asrock 775 dual VSTA) is notoriously finicky about PCIe video cards. Has
anyone
out there managed to get a Nvidia 7950gx2 512MB to work w/the Asrock 775
dual VSTA?

Thanks in advance.

Branek wrote:
> Asrock is a wholly owned subsidiary of Asus, since my newserver doesn't list any
> asrock newsgroups I'm posting this question here. I know this motherboard (the
> Asrock 775 dual VSTA) is notoriously finicky about PCIe video cards. Has anyone
> out there managed to get a Nvidia 7950gx2 512MB to work w/the Asrock 775
> dual VSTA?
>
> Thanks in advance.

Motherboard BIOS compatibility is listed here.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce_gx2_sbios/us.asp

There is an architecture diagram here for 7950GX2.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=2016&page=2

The PT880/Ultra chipset, has an AGP 8X slot and a PCI Express x4
interface. That is why the Asrock 775 dual VSTA is "finicky" about
video, because the chipset doesn't have a full x16 lane interface.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/ch..._p4-series.jsp

I don't think there is any risk of damage - the only risk would be
that it doesn't work properly. Trying to run two GPUs through
only x4 lanes of bandwidth, is going to reduce their performance
quite a bit.

Paul

"Paul" <> wrote in message news:fgpibs$umf$...
> Branek wrote:
>> Asrock is a wholly owned subsidiary of Asus, since my newserver doesn't
>> list any
>> asrock newsgroups I'm posting this question here. I know this motherboard
>> (the
>> Asrock 775 dual VSTA) is notoriously finicky about PCIe video cards. Has
>> anyone
>> out there managed to get a Nvidia 7950gx2 512MB to work w/the Asrock 775
>> dual VSTA?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>
> Motherboard BIOS compatibility is listed here.
>
> http://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce_gx2_sbios/us.asp
>
> There is an architecture diagram here for 7950GX2.
>
> http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=2016&page=2
>
> The PT880/Ultra chipset, has an AGP 8X slot and a PCI Express x4
> interface. That is why the Asrock 775 dual VSTA is "finicky" about
> video, because the chipset doesn't have a full x16 lane interface.
>
> http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/ch..._p4-series.jsp
>
> I don't think there is any risk of damage - the only risk would be
> that it doesn't work properly. Trying to run two GPUs through
> only x4 lanes of bandwidth, is going to reduce their performance
> quite a bit.
>
> Paul

Thanks for the insights Paul, I think I will give up on this idea now. It's
too bad the 8800GT's don't work on this motherboard. I guess I'll have
to look into the 8800GTS's.

ON Tue, 6 Nov 2007 10:08:47 -0800, "Branek"
<> WROTE:

>Thanks for the insights Paul, I think I will give up on this idea now. It's
>too bad the 8800GT's don't work on this motherboard.

Check out the last message at
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1031613520

It looks like a new Bios is available that lets the 8800GT work on the
ASRock 775Dual VSTA.

Nez