Introduction:

ASRock is a company that does not chase after the PC hardcore users who always try to get the latest and greatest the industry has to offer. It focuses on products that were main-stream last year or last quarter, or it offers product that bridges the old and new. The popularity of Intel C2D and the introduction of 45nm; ASRock is stepping up the process of product introduction. 4Core 1600 P35 WiFi+ with overclocking features including DDR2/DDR3 surprises a few of us. Full featured with Firewire, Cross-Fire, WiFi and the traditional parallel port and eSATA, plus the support of the upcoming to Intel Penryn, and Wolfdale.

Accordingly, this board will go as high as 579Mhz; 550Mhz at BIOS level and the remaining from ASRock OC Tuner Windows software. This is also the first board from ASRock utilizing all solid capacitors. Two pairs of DDR2 and one pair of DDR3 provision will make certain an easy upgrade when DDR3 price drops down the road.





Features:



How about the first 24-pin main connector and 6-pin power connector are finally showing up? Wow, this must be a new ASRock.



The combination of Intel P35 and ICH9R should not be strangers to most of us by now, as the combo has been around found in many Intel Boards of late. Having said that, I would skip the introduction to save both of our time. In traditional ASRock product format, passive heatsink on both North & Southbridge is the only offer; no fan, no heatpipe or any fancy "bling" arrangement.



The review sample WiFi +AP includes, of course, the WiFi expansion board and the + includes Firewire. Otherwise, you don't get FireWire.

Closer Look:

ASRock always maintains their products fully supporting the main-stream users. Allow me to clarify this; it has parallel port for old printers, PS2 ports for mouse & keyboard and even a com-port in addition to USB, Fire-Wire and eSATA. This kind of support is welcome to office IT, "home-makers" who try to make ends meet and the more matured group having to use PC at its much earlier stage; no pun intended for the young audience who might have no use of a printer or any device that requires the use of a COM/Parallel-port. :)

However, don't be discouraged for a moment, as what you are about to see is something different from ARSock this time.






Two pairs of DDR2 and one pair of DDR3 memory slots


Everything is here for both the traditional, office and home users; extra for gamers.


24-pin main + 6-pin CPU power the first in ASRock board



WiFi board - to be attached to onboard header


Cross-Fire PCIe


ASRock is still lack behind others in the use of jumpers for memory divider




There is one jumper setting missing for FSB800 CPU, which I will explain later.

BIOS:

Much approved BIOS! This may mark the first time that ASRock offers decent CPU and Memory voltage. However, memory divider remains in the use of pin jumper setup. I have had some tough time in dealing with the BIOS, after more than two weeks on and off toying with it; I finally got the hang of the "unique" behavior.

Firstly, when any of the BIOS settings is "incorrectly set" FSB, Memory timing or voltage in overclocking, it would have power on and off sequences in booting the BIOS rather than the normal boot up you are accustomed to. Secondly, my monitor screen goes "nuts" when memory divider (pin jumpers) are pinned wrong. I have to unplug the power supply, reset CMOS and wait for at least 15 to 30 minutes before I could restart the process.




The CPU is "pin-modded" to FSB266, I will explain later on the reason why this was needed.



The multi or CPU ratio is locked; the original BIOS came with the board allowed the ratio change and it was "unlocked". Too bad that I did not take a screen shot, the original or media sample BIOS was flashed because it did not support FSB800 CPU, hence, I had to flash it to new version.




CPU voltage tops out at 1.6v, plenty enough for C2D/Quad. Memory voltage could reach 2.72v, a dangerously high limit.

NB, SB and VTT have four settings without value:

Auto

Low

Medium

High

Highest

The BIOS settings are pretty straight forward. It gets kind of confusing when used with jumpers (previous page) for memory divider and type of memory used.

ASRock OC Tuner:

With the addition of CPU, Memory, N/S Bridges and VTT voltage adjustments in the BIOS; ASRock adds OC Tuner for Windows users. It is very user friendly. Anything that can be adjusted in the BIOS can also be accessed here. It allows overclocking the CPU in "scratch pad" for evaluation, or set it to auto load during Windows start up.

Although I like this feature, I would not recommend using Windows for overclocking. Do it at the BIOS level once you find the sweet spot.





System Monitor - CPU, MB temperature, CPU & Chassis Fan, CPU Fan speed Control


Voltage Monitor


Voltage Control - adjustment. CPU voltage increment is at a very fine 0.00625 as found in BIOS Nice!


Overclocking made easy here

Overclocking:

I normally don't overclock much. I do when the CPU is willing with not much voltage increase and can be cooled by stock heatsink or an inexpensive air cooler. In the past, I was able to overclock AMD Dual Core from 1.8G to 2.8G without much fuss; Intel P4 over 1 Ghz from default speed using stock coolers.

Almost all Intel C2D processors are willing to be pushed. With FSB800 low end 2MB and 1MB cache being so inexpensive, I am going to, once again use the E2140 and E4500. I have had a very tough time in getting this board to work with 800FSB CPU. After several days of trying, I finally fired up an email to ASRock. FSB800 CPU requires another jumper setting that was not in the manual to achieve 1:1 memory ratio. The jumper setting is below;





Additionally, ASRock media sample BIOS allows the change of multi (lowering in this case). The subsequence BIOS release version P1.1 with FSB800 CPU enhancement takes away this feature.

Test Setup: Open Bench

Intel E2140

Intel E4500

Seagate 500GB SATA HD

Chaintech 7600GT 610/757

AXERam PC2-6400 2x1GB

LG Cable SHS (3 heatpipes low profile) cooler

Windows XP Pro with latest update

OCZ 420 Watts PowerStream PS

Room temp ~20°C

Intel E2140

I had high hope to reach 100% overclock on the E2140. Although it was able to boot into Windows, it failed any stress test. Here is best it could deliver at reasonable vcore.




Intel E4500



The E4500 hits 3.3Ghz stable. It would go 3.4G requiring higher Vcore which I don't think it will do much benefit in day to day work.

Performance:

I am quite sure this board will do just as good with FSB1333 processors; and deserves to be tested using the latest from Intel and, or, DDR3 memory. For comparison purposes, I use the E4500 and lower the speed to 3.26Ghz to match my previous ASRock boards.

ASRock released several new motherboards in the last 6 months; P965, P31 and now P35. Let's find out how they compete with each other. Then, it depends on what you use to measure. In short, they are pretty close to each other.

Surprisingly, P35 does not out perform the older P965 or P31 in certain areas.








Summary

Onboard Wifi & HD Audio:


After installing Wifi Realtek driver, Windows Wireless Network will no longer work, the system recognizes 3rd party software being applied. It is no difference than some of the laptop WiFi card.

The WiFi card installation is simple; plug the card into the header located in between the PCI expansion slots. It will take away the use of one PCI expansion slot, however.

The setup is similar to Windows Wireless Network. It is a nice feature to be had, especially for HTPC where RJ45 is not available at times.






I always enjoy the HD Audio from ASRock boards. 4Core1600P shares the same HD Audio in their previous P965 and P31 boards. I have not experience any glitches in the use of ASRock HD audio since August 2007.




Conclusion:

I have this board since the beginning of the year. Not until I noticed the new BIOS version P1.10 was I able to get any overclocking done on the E2140 and E4500. The jumper pin configuration for FSB800 was not in the manual. Again, this took another three weeks to resolve. I did have a few frustrated moments which were behind me once the glitches were sorted out.

From time to time, I have to re-establish WiFi connection. I have yet to try uninstalling the ASRock software and go straight to using Windows Network. I am sure this could be done as I have done so in other desktop and laptop. I did not cover Cross-Fire this time because this area has been touched by many since its inception more than a year ago and on our previous ASRock mother board reviews.

This is a huge leap for ASRock in providing overclocking features; In addition to several improvements: 24-pin main, 6-pin CPU, OC Tuner for Windows users and plenty of voltage adjustments, yet providing a full feature main board for all parties concern.
Lastly, the provision of DDR3 for future upgrade when the price is right. The only discontent would have to be the jumper settings and the location of the 24-pin main location. Vdroop is about 0.03 volt, acceptable in comparison to most others. Bear in mind, there is not much memory tweaking for the die-hard fans; simple for majority of users.

When overclocking does not go well; the BIOS will restart three times to reset most of the time, unless the jumpers are set wrong or out of specs. This is the best Intel board from ASRock today in my opinion. It is priced at ~$129 at Newegg, this marks the highest price point mainboard from ASRock, yet it packs a lot of features.

PRO
Supports Penryn Quad, Yorkfield and Wolfdale
1st BIOS with decent OC settings
DDR2 & DDR3 provision
User friendly OC Tuner for Windows XP & Vista
WiFi included
Parallel, COM, PS2 ports, FireWire and HD audio

CON
Jumpers!!
Main connector location