ASrock 775i915PL-SATA2 is the first Intel 915PL based solution which comes with 2 PCIe graphics slots and a SATA II port supported by the Jmicron controller chip. With two full length PCIe slot, this board is capable of doing surround video display with 4 monitors. That might be a solution for the stock brokers.

Performance wise, the board is quite speedy and performed pretty well I would say.  As I have mentioned before, it does support one single SATA II port which allows you hook up to one SATA II drive for 3.0Gb/s speed. We tested the board with a SATA II hooked on a 945P and on the ASrock using the Jmicron and we found that the Jmicron's performance seems to surpassed that of the native SATA II implementation by Intel ICH7.

There is one thing I dislike is the handling of jumpers. If you notice from the gallery, there are jumpers that needs to be jumpered if you want to either activate the PCIex4 or Jmicron SATAII controller. It is either this or that because both runs off PCIe bus.

The board has some basic overclocking features and there isn't much you can adjust. The more apparent ones are the CPUCLK, ASync settings, ram timing adjustments. You can check the gallery for more details. In our tests, we can o/c the board to 230MHz FSB x 15 with RAM running at DDR460. When it comes to PCIe graphics tests, it seems a bit slower when using it with the PCIe x4 slot. We tried to get hold of modified SLI drivers to see if SLI would work out. It seems that it just couldn't. Even if it can, it would be just 4x + 4x.

Overall, we did not have any issues with the board. It is a pity this board does not support the Dual Core processors. Furthermore, there is only one single SATAII port. If you are looking for a entry level LGA775 board that supports EMT64 and HyperThreading processor, this board might just fit the bill. (Check pricing link below).

Pricing

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Pros

• 8 USB 2.0 ports
• Surround video
• Jmicron SATAII controller for 3.0Gb/s

Cons

• No 1394
• No SATA II
• No Wi-Fi
• No GbE

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.