First 945PL motherboard that supports CrossFire Technology

ASRock 775XFire-eSATA2 is an amazing motherboard. It supports many features that can't possibly be realized on 945PL motherboards for other brands. For one thing, it is the first 945PL motherboard that supports CrossFire™ Technology! You probably have heard of CrossFire™ VGA boards running on ATI® CrossFire™ or Intel® 955X, 975X motherboards, but for 945PL, this is the first time.

ASRock 775XFire-eSATA2 supports Intel® Dual Core Pentium D and Pentium 4 / Celeron D, and even Presler and Cedar Mill processors, FSB 800/533 MHz, dual channel DDRII533 x 4 DIMMs, PCI Express x 16 slot, one additional AGI Express slot to adopt 2nd PCI Express x 16 VGA card, and other PCI Express x4, x2, x1 interface cards. As for the support of hard disk type, 775XFire-eSATA2 supports 4 Serial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, supporting RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and Intel® Matrix Storage), and 2 x eSerial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors (shared with 2 SATAII ports). And of course, they are hot-plug supported.

eSATAII is another great feature that represents 775XFire-eSATA2. This motherboard supports eSATAII interface, the external SATAII specification. eSATAII allows you to enjoy the SATAII function provided by the I/O of your computer, offering the high speed data transfer rate up to 3.0Gb/s, and the convenient mobility like USB. eSATAII is equipped with Hot Plug capability that enables you to exchange drives easily. For example, with eSATAII interface, you may simply plug your eSATAII device to the eSATAII ports instead of opening your chassis to exchange your SATAII hard disk. Currently, on the market, the data transfer rate of USB 2.0 is up to 480Mb/s, and for IEEE 1394a is up to 400Mb/s. However, eSATAII provides a much faster data transfer rate than USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a, and still keeps the convenience of Hot Plug feature. Therefore, on the basis of the advantageous transfer speed and the facilitating mobile capability, in the near future, eSATAII will replace USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a to be a trend for external interface.

775XFire-eSATA2 specifications:

• LGA 775 for Intel Dual Core Pentium D and Pentium 4 / Celeron D, supporting Presler and Cedar Mill processors
• Intel® 945PL Chipset
• Supports FSB 800/533 MHz processor, EM64T CPU and H-T Technology
• Untied Overclocking : During Overclocking, FSB enjoys better margin due to fixed PCIE/ PCI Buses
• Supports Dual Channel DDRII533 x 4 DIMMs
• Supports ATI CrossFire
• PCI Express x 16 slot
• Additional AGI Express slot to adopt 2nd PCI Express x 16 VGA card, and other PCI Express x4, x2, x1 interface cards
• PCI Express x 1 slot
• Hybrid Booster – ASRock Safe Overclocking Technology
• 4 x Serial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connector, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and Intel Matrix Storage) and "Hot Plug" functions, and 1 ATA100 IDE port
• 2 x eSerial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors (shared with 2 SATAII ports), support "Hot Plug" function
• 5.1 Channel with High Definition Audio, 10/100 Ethernet LAN
• Windows Vista Hardware Ready
• ASRock eSATAII I/O: 2 eSATAII ports, 4 ready-to-use USB ports

February, 1 2006