The Epox 8RDA+ doesnt have PCI Lock

[Maaij]

Hi

See http://www.overclockers.com

I found someone who emaild Epox tech
Here is what he said:

Hello,
I have a quick question. I am searching for a good overclockable Nforce2 based board. One of my options is the Epox 8RDA+. I was wondering if the PCI bus has a lock at 33 Mhz? I have some PCI devices which dont like a high PCI speed.

So if the board does not have a lock i think i will have to opt for an other brand board.

Kind Regards,

This was the replay from Epox

Dear ,
In This model EP-8RDA+ the PCI bus is not lock.

Best Regards,

Abdel. Et-talee (RMA Team)(FAE Team)

Doesnt sounds good
Looks like it dont have a PCI lock afterall
Why Epox didnt tell us earlier?? and those ppl at aoaforums knows is too I think.

What do you think ??

[Kunaak]

people here still been hitting 230+ on the FSB so I can't really say I care if it does or doesn't, cause something in that board is just right.

[Maaij]

But I hate running my HD at higher speed
Why doesnt they tell us sooner ??

But I agree this bord can run very high fsb speed. Hope my HD can run at high PCI speed. (Seagate Baraccuda 4)

[Justintoxicated]

i dunno man, the guy probably was just looking at the specs and it didnt say PCI lock so he said it did not...Epox tech support do not know all that much...Last time i emailed them they told me 8k3a+ does not support PC3200 C2 even if you run it at PC2700 speeds...Obviously they were wrong since the 89k3a+ is what corsair actualy uses to test their memory at 200 FSB (OR IT WAS WHAT THEY USED AT THE TIME). And corsair gaurantees PC3200 C2 to be able to run at PC2700C2...I emailed them more than onece and never recieved any usefull info...The guy at aoa forums doesnt know much either. We had a disagreement, which AOA quickly covered up since they were way in the wrong.

Im pretty damn sure the PCI is locked to the AGP...It just doesn't say it on the box or on their website, the guy probably actualy has no idea what the hell you were talking about.

just my 2 cents....

[zakelwe]

I think this is probably right, after all, if it did have a PCI lock they'd be singing it across the land as another advantage of their board. That's why they are so touchy about it at aoaforums .. they hide behind the NDA so that they don't have to admit to it.

There will be one way to tell immeditaly and that is to put a Fujistu drive on it. These get data corruption at 37MHz and crap out completely above 40 MHz within a few seconds Sadly I don't have one at present because I accidently put it on at 42.5 one day and found the above rule.

Epox have a great board, but you have to wonder why they give 2.1v for vcore a 250 FSB BIOS and locked AGP bus and then do not lock the PCI bus.

Regards

Andy

[ASRaiven]

Emericana form o\c forums e-mailed epox about the pci lock and they have replied that the board does have the pci locketd automaticlly.

Dear Customer

The PCI is locked at 33MHz. I tested using an oscilloscope to measure
the bus at CPU clocks 100, 133, 140, 150, and 166Mhz. The scope
measured 33Mhz at each setting.


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-----Original Message-----
From: Ricky Kaufman [mailto:emericanaaa@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 10:52 AM
To: support@epox.com
Subject: EP-8RDA+: Hey as you prolly notice i hav...


---Technical support form results---

Name: Ricky Kaufman
E-mail: emericanaaa@yahoo.com
Submitted: 12/7/2002 10:52 PST
IP address: 24.91.124.99
HTTP Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1)
Gecko/20021130

Model: EP-8RDA+
REV: 1.0
Serial #: 0004610-000000944
Vendor: www.mwave.com
Purchased: (not provided)
Bios: 12-03-2002
CPU: AXP 1800+
RAM: Corsair XMS 3200
VGA: Albatron Turbo Ti4200
Drive: Western Digital 100gig 8mb cache
O/S: Windows 2000
Other: (not provided)

--Details--
Hey as you prolly notice i have a board. my hardrive has been acting
quirky recently and i am not sure if it is because of the FSB my board
is running at. Right now my board is running at 200FSB. Many other
companies run there nforce 2 board w/ the pci locked at 33mhz. i was
wondering if the 8rda+ does this or if it uses at 1/5 divisor like was
included on the KT333 boards.

please respond to me because i am debating on wheter to warrenty my
harddrive because of curruption. if the pci is locked at 33mhz i know
that the reason for curruption is a bad hard drive. if it is not locked
then i would know i need to use a lesser FSB.

pls help!
thanks!

[Kunaak]

hahaa, Emericana seems to be becoming the man to know everything about the NF2 boards...

[Emericana]

ooohhh i am becoming famous now!!!! (i love that banana!)

still i dont believe it i believe it is locked at 166mhz and below but who cares?

i emailed them again asking for 166mhz and above. i DOUBT they will message me back.

it just doesnt make sence why i get agp tearing and hardrive curruption at 200fsb now. it either is not locked or i have something set wrong in the bios.

anyone know what S.M.A.R.T hardrive does in bios?

[gokickrocks]

overclockers.com says it is using a 1/5 divider

[stoopid]

From all that Ive read it does NOT have the PCI lock and only has a 1/5 divider

[zakelwe]

Neil Armstrong came around for tea last night and told me, in confidentiality, that " they managed to put me on the moon, but we still can't get a definite answer to thr Epox PCI lock problem .."

[Jeff]

Originally posted by zakelwe
Neil Armstrong came around for tea last night and told me, in confidentiality, that " they managed to put me on the moon, but we still can't get a definite answer to thr Epox PCI lock problem .."

[MrLavender]

I guess the only way this will be settled is when somebody puts one of those PC Geiger display devices in a 8RDA+ and checks the PCI frequency at high fsb speeds, like they did for the Asus NF2 board.

Any Epox owners with ~$70 to spare?

[tweaky]

Well right now I am running 237FSB async 24/7 without any issues whatsoever so you can make your own judgements based around that. I know it isn't exactly confirmation still but like Kunaak mentioned there has to be something right in there.

[Justintoxicated]

that is the second email i have read that says the PCI IS locked...

Like i said some epox support guys just dont know what they are talkign about, getting 2 compleatly different answers is proof, and screw aoa forums they dont know anything either....

I still belive the PCI is locked especialy since someone posted a similar email response on hardforums. Epox need to step it up on there product support..

[Marci]

Anyone checked what Sandra says PCI Bus speed is when running at 200FSB? I don't personally have the 8RDA+ or i'd check myself, but it's the first place I'd be looking...

[MrLavender]

Sandra is useless for this, it doesn't even read the correct PCI speed on my KX7-333 when running a 1/5 divider. Doesn't even see the 1/5 in fact!

The only way to be sure is a hardware measurement solution like I mentioned above.

[tweaky]

This is all you get in Sandra. Perhaps 1x PCIClk means 1x 33Mhz :p

[Marci]

well, in theory if AGP is locked at 66Mhz in Bios, and somewhere on that same snapshot it mentions the AGP running at 2x (66Mhz) then I'd assume that yes, 1x = 33Mhz. Especially if other benches can show & confirm the AGP to be 66Mhz.

Prob I have is not havin an nf2 board to hand... I'll hook one up at the shop on monday... I have a ISA Probe Card with a PCI Adapter somewhere... not tried usin it in a while, but might be able to provide the answer...

Is there no way of reading the info thru SMBus on these boards with an LCD Display or similar??

[morphling1]

I guess you fellas miss this :

"ARGH! 8RDA has too many clocks! quote:

Lets really examine this nForce 2 board, the EPoX 8RDA+.

We know that the SPP (Northbridge) and MCP-T (Southbridge) are connected together via HyperTransport, rather than the more traditional PCI. If you look closely at the HyperTransport bus in the nForce 2 implementation, it operates at 800MB/sec. We also know that is a point-to-point bus, meaning that it only connects two devices together. It's also packetised, so instead of handling individual bytes, it handles packets of data, rather like most PC parts. (Hard disk, Ethernet, SCSI, floppy and so on). This is partly why the nForce can provide a feature called "StreamThrough". "StreamThrough" just means that the HyperTransport bus can guarantee dedicated bandwidth for particular data transfers. This means that the packets of data containing video information coming from the network connector will always be able to travel across the bus when they need to. They don't get pushed around by other devices such as the hard disks, or USB devices. Cool huh?

In addition, the memory can run asynchronously from the FSB. All this is important! Running things asynchronously means that each device run asynchronously needs it's own clock to keep it's own timing.

Before, when everything was running synchronously, there was a master clock that regulated everything. Each different frequency required was simply a division of the master clock. In one fell swoop, all this has changed!

The FSB and memory bus can run asynchonously, so each must have a separate clock. We also know that the AGP slot can run at a fixed clock - this is asynchronous, so it too needs it's own clock.

So far, we have 3 clocks, all independent of each other, and we haven't looked outside the SPP yet! Remember that HyperTransport bus? Well, that needs it's own clock too to regulate the transfers across it. In fact, for every 8 bits, HyperTransport needs a seperate clock. An 8bit wide HT bus needs one clock, a 16bit wide HT bus needs two clock, and a 32bit wide HT bus needs 4 clocks! nVidia's implementation only uses 8 bit wide transfers, so it only needs a single clock!

We're up at 4 clocks now, and none of them are generated from the same source.

Lets move down to the southbridge. This is where information gets a little more sketchy. We already know from the SPP that there's no master clock. Where does the SPP derive it's clocking from then? It would make little sense to derive it from the FSB, as the MCP-T doesn't connect to the FSB, nor is the MCP-T's connection to the SPP regulated by the FSB. It would make more sense to derive the MCP-T's clocking from the HyperTransport bus, as there is only one clock in this case. If the nForce2 chipset had a wider HyperTransport, then it would be more difficult, as there would be more clocks for the HyperTransport bus. An HT bus clock runs at 100MHz

Let's look at what needs a clock on the MCP-T. Hmm, this could be a nice place for a list...





Dual IDE interface (266) ?

PCI bridge (133) (33)

Audio Processing Unit (150) ?

Audio Codec Interface (1) ?

Ethernet (25) (20)

LPC Bus (Low Pin Count) - The remnants of the ISA bus. (1)

Dual USB (50) (20)



Remember, ALL of these are integrated onto the MCP-T. The first number in brackets illustrate the approximate bandwidth needed to run the various parts flat out. The second number illustrates the clock rate needed.

With each of these devices needing different speed clocks, it makes little sense to tie them all together into the non-existent clock generator. Remember that the SPP doesn't need the clock generator, as it has 4 separate clock generators in silicon just to handle it's own interfaces and keep things running asynchronously.

A lack of clock generator, and a radically different architecture to the standard Northbridge/Southbridge system calls for a lot of differences. This includes the MCP-T having it's own clock generator that runs independently of the SPP. Independence means that the audio, PCI, IDE and Ethernet all run in spec all the time. There's no question about PCI locks or an IDE lock, as that would require a complete redesign of the nForce2 chipset! Items like Ethernet and Audio are highly clockspeed sensitive. If you changed the clock for the Ethernet, your machine could no longer communicate with other devices on the network. The audio should be fairly obvious what would happen!

All in all, this points to all the peripherals running in spec regardless of what the FSB, Memory bus or AGP bus do.

As far as items like IDE disk corruption go, there's more to this than meets the eye. People are already beginning to trace some of this strange corruption through to memory, rather than hard disk. Why this should be is odd, but may be related to the caching all modern OSes use. Modern OSes rely heavily on data cached in main memory. This cache can be a sizable chunk of memory (On my 512MB W2K system, the cache is nearly 200MB in size!). Any slight corruption of the cache will cause nasty side effects as this corrupt data gets used. As this data usually includes the various control structures on the disk (FAT for FAT, MFT for NTFS, I-Nodes for EXT2FS and FNodes for HPFS), this can be very dangerous. Couple this with the fact that the control structures cached will be accessed EVERY time the OS wants to do something with the hard disk, and these become heavily used parts of memory.

Phew.. Hopefully that'll give a bit of a better idea about why the nForce2 architecture is so radiacally different from VIA and other's implementations. This means that things you used to understand may be totally different! Fortunately, as time goes on, people will understand the nForce2 better and better.

Áedán"


To sum it up, yes PCI is locked to 33MHz on all nforce2 boards, and that got nothnig to do with AGP bus

[morphling1]

Original thread here:
http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/showt...threadid=12185

[tweaky]

Makes a lot of sense Theres no way you could boot at 240FSB without the PCI being locked for sure.

[spaceman]

Thanx much, morphling1. I'm still pretty confused, but not NEARLY as much now. I see that ideally, I want to keep my PC2700 runnin' at 166. My mobo's still new to me, so I'll have to figure out the bios enough to run my FSB higher and mem in spec.

[ASRaiven]

http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/showt...threadid=12256

[Emericana]

Everybody read my post at the end of this thread:

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showth...58#post1297658

i have solved it and am 100% sure the lock is there. use some good ram and you will be able to run asynch. the curruption ppl have been gettin was from the ram not the hardrives