Overclocking my 800E causes network problems???

[Twilight Man]

Hey everyone, I'm new here so if I break any conventions, please let me know. I'm trying to overslock my new 800E cC0 on an Asus P3B-F with an Abit Slotket. It runs fine at it's rated 800 mhz, but if I increase the speed my NIC no longer functions. It appears stable... played an hour of Mechwarrior 4 @ 920 just to try it out, but no net connection. I'm guessing it has something to do with my NIC not being able to handle the increased PCI bus speed, but I'm not sure yet how to increase FSB while maintaining PCI bus speed... any advice, experiences or other help is appreciated.

[got_yogurt]

Hey... do you know what type of chipset your using? (ie 440BX)? If not, you should go into your BIOS and change the PCI ratio from 1/3 to 1/4. that should help. Its most likely a Crappy NIC card, and it cant handle even slightly more than 33MHz. Just look for someway to change the PCI bus ratio.

[bdf24]

I am not fimaliar with that mother board. But there may be a pci divider in the bios. My Abit BE6-II has it. I'm running a fsb of 125 so I keep my PCI divider @ 1/4 the fsb. Thats keeps it at 31mhz. So it stills runs at spec.

And yes that would be my guess to what the problems is. check that out and get back to us.

[Twilight Man]

Ok.... I did some tests. The problem is definitely the PCI bus speed, sadly my MB isn't very flexible in that regard. It provides a list of FSB speeds along with their corresponding PCI bus speeds, but the two are not independently changable. The best option, 133/33, wouldn't post. 124/31 would post @992 but Win 2000 would hang after starting to load. Windows would load at 115/38 @920, but the NIC was a problem. At 110/35 @880 the NIC did work, so if I could get the above mentioned 133 or 124 options to work, I'd be set. Is that a cooling issue? I'm currently using a ThermalTake Golden Orb, would adding a case fan help? Input welcome, and thanks for your replies.

[Twilight Man]

yes, it's a BX chipset... what would that indicate for me as far as configuration?

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

I agree with Got_Yogurt...crappy nic. I have had good luck with Lynksys nic's...I have a L'S' nic in a BE6 at 140fsb pci set to 1/4=35?....I never considered the nic when I tried to go to 150fsb in this old bx board...but at 35mhz the nic keeps up. I will be adding another nic to this comp...to network all four comps I have here and I will be putting the nic to the ultimate test in this 815e board.
Too bad about your lack of pci/bus settings :-(

[bdf24]

Yeah, that does suck not having the pci bus settings. I know my old bh6 never had them either.

[Twilight Man]

My NIC is a Linksys LNE100TX ... Just for kicks I swapped it with one of my other ones, a Netgear FA310TX and I experienced the same limitation. I'll bring a 3Com home from work and let you know what happens.

Until then, any ideas on how to get the 124/31 or 133/33 settings to be stable?