PCI Speed and Overclocking: A Closer Look at A64 and P4 Chipsets
by Wesley Fink on February 16, 2004 9:42 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
PCI Speed and Overclocking: Test Configuration
One of the nice things about the PC Geiger is that PCI speed is displayed as soon as boot begins. To check the PCI speed, any PCI card polling and disabling was turned off in BIOS. We monitored the PC Geiger reported PCI speed at the beginning of boot and as we entered the BIOS screen. We did not boot into an OS.| Athlon64 FX51 Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | Intel Pentium 4 3.2C AMD Athlon64 3200+ |
| Operating System(s): | N/A |
| RAM: | 2 x 512Mb OCZ 3500 Platinum Ltd 2 x 512Mb Mushkin PC3500 Level II |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | N/A |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | N/A |
| Motherboards: | Asus P4C800-E (Intel 875p) Asus P4S800D-E (SiS 655TX) Soltek SL-PT880PRO (VIA PT880) AOpen AK86-L (VIA K8T800) ECS 755A2 (SiS 755) Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus (nForce3-150) |
The motherboards tested were those available in our lab, but they were also selected to test the availability of PCI lock on various chipsets. The new VIA PT880 chipset claims a PCI lock and the Soltek SL-PT880PRO is the first production PT880 board that we have received. We were very impressed with the AOpen AK86-L for A64, which is the first VIA K8T800 board to show a working PCI/AGP lock in BIOS. The SiS 755 also showed a working PCI/AGP lock on the Reference Board, and the ECS is the first production SiS 755 board that we have received. The Soyo CK8 Dragon is a nForce3-150 board, and all the nF3 boards have claimed working PCI/AGP locks in their BIOS'.
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gordon151 - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
All the chipsets for the A64 don't have PCI locks, why are you singling out VIA Icewind???Wonga - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
I think it is a bit pathetic how none of the chipsets for the Athlon 64 can manage to get a working PCI lock in them.Come on SIS/VIA/nVidia, you can do better than that. How they can do it for the Pentium 4 but screw up on the Athlon 64 is pathetic.
Icewind - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
The first SATA did rely on the PCI bridge but the newer ones have their own dedicated bus to the southbridge so it is not affected by OC. ATA is still attached to the PCI bus if I remember correctly.lebe0024 - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
What about harddrive controlers? Does SATA depend on the PCI bus? how about PATA?Icewind - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
Cool, no wonder my P4C800-E Deluxe is such a kick ass overclocker. Another reason why not to buy VIA chipset mobo's. Lets hope Nvidia can make a good 939 pin mobo later this year, VIA still leaves a bad taste in my mouthPrinceGaz - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link
Would it have been possible to raise the FSB to 233 or 234 on those A64 chipsets to see if a 1/7 divider kicks in? I believe the A64 is partially multiplier-unlocked and can have it lowered because of the Cool n Quiet power-saving technology so the CPU itself shouldn't have been a problem.If current 8x AGP cards are so sensitive to AGP speed, why not use a slower AGP mode or use an older card which can tolerate a far wider range for some of the tests? I've got an old 2MX somewhere that was quite happy with a 75MHz AGP speed (150FSB on a KT266A chipset, equivalent to 225FSB on current boards) and may well have gone somewhat higher but my PC2100 memory couldn't take any more.
Interesting article though, surprising about the nForce3 board.