nForce3 with a confirmed PCI lock was available at newegg for the last two months

c627627 · Apr 24, 2004

nForce3 with a confirmed PCI lock was available at newegg for the last two months

EDIT: An even better Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro now has a confirmed PCI lock as well.

While it's best to wait for the new PCI locked VIA K8T800 Pro (not K8T800) chipset mobos or the PCI locked nForce3 250 (not 150) chipset mobos, it seems that there is an nForce3 150 with a confirmed PCI lock that's available for purchase now and has been for the last couple of months.

Proof:

AOpen AK89 Max: "After recent BIOS updates, it also proved to be one of the few nForce3-150 boards with a working PCI/AGP lock."
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=2033

What are the other "few nForce3s" they refer to that have a confirmed PCI lock?

EDIT: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro is better because it is also PCI locked,

Watch out for this:

Maxvla said:
someone im'd me today and said the aopen only does 1.5v on the chip which would severely limit oc'ability. i'd stay away.

Also, EDIT April 29, 2004:

PCI locked nForce3 250 (not 150) is here:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=292790

OC Detective · Apr 24, 2004

This was a mobo I mentioned that I thought was locked in another thread - Maxvla mentioned another one as well - his shuttle AN50R I think.

TC · Apr 24, 2004

I just got a gigabyte K8N pro and it's locked correctly most of the time, albeit not always - have to manually retard it when I up the htt sometimes.

Sentential · Apr 24, 2004

Wow thats incredible.....an AMD chip that clocks like an Intel :drool:

Newcastle is gonna ROCK!

OC Detective · Apr 24, 2004

It would seem that this is likely dependant on the bios - after all the initial reference boards supplied were PCI locked.

Gautam · Apr 24, 2004

I think its been confirmed that the Shuttle that Maxvla has is not PCI locked. Some sound cards, like the Audigy2 can handle high PCI buses. Mine does it just fine as well. This is the first A64 board of any sort I've seen that has a confirmed lock.

The AK89 looks like a great choice to me, although lack of PCI locks hasn't hurt my overclocking one bit.

Maybe I should try risking some old HD's to confirm that my Gigabyte lacks a lock?

c627627 · Apr 24, 2004

Nice of you to offer to take one for the team but with PCI locked new 754 mobos around the corner, the sacrifice may not be worth it. You may need that HD for a similar test in the future + you got all you wanted out of your system even without the lock, didn't you?

OC Detective:
Shuttle AN50R nForce3 -150 is not PCI locked per

c627627 said:
http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/nforce3_pci/

We used the Shuttle AN50R nForce3 -150 based board to monitor the PCI input clock at different frequencies using a HewlettPackard HP54512B High Spee3d oscilloscope. Here is what we found:

At 200 MHz system clock, one PCI clock peak to peak interval equals exactly 30 ns, which corresponds to 33 MHz. At 222 MHz, the clock cycle time gets shorter, in fact, we measured 27.1 ns which corresponds to 36.9 MHz.

Our measurements clearly show that, also on the nForce3 chipset, the PCI bus frequency is directly derived from the system clock by means of a divider.

While AOpen AK89 Max is PCI locked per:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=2709350

OC Detective · Apr 25, 2004

Perhaps a more recent bios provides the PCI lock? That is a 4 month old review after all.

Maxvla · Apr 25, 2004

i guarantee my AN50R is locked.

if i set it to 200mhz and use clockgen in windows the highest i can go is about 235fsb before it shuts down. if i change it to 201 then use clockgen i can go all the way to 338. while i'm at 338 i can play music using my audigy pci card. my ide drives are on the pci bus as well. everything works fine. i don't think my audigy nor my ide drives are capable of running at 56mhz pci. this suggests that 200 is not locked, however 201 and above engages the lock.

i would be interested to see if they tried that. this could be a crucial factor for their lock tests.

TheTick · Apr 25, 2004

how is aopen for a company for OC'ing? I have never really thought highly of them, are they a small company?

Maxvla · Apr 25, 2004

someone im'd me today and said the aopen only does 1.5v on the chip which would severely limit oc'ability. i'd stay away.

c627627 · Apr 25, 2004

Maxvla, you shou'd write to these people:
http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/nforce3_pci/

But conflicting info may make sense if this man's onto something:

OC Detective said:
Perhaps a more recent bios provides the PCI lock? That is a 4 month old review after all.

...on the same topic:

bulk88 said:
What I've figured about NF3 150's pci lock is that, it exists, and that Nvidia didn't document it or gave it a wrong definition or left it marked reserved.

I think what happened was Nvidia's datasheets writers knew there was a PCI lock but didn't know how to turn it on so they said to themselves, "the HTL will always be 600mhz because of the HTL multi, so I guess the HTL multi makes a PCI lock since the PCI is ratioed off the HTL", so they wrote down, to turn on the PCI lock set (making up) register 10 to 1 (effectivly turning on a /18 divider). Now some MB bios designers may have found out on their own (they have the equipment to check the PCI bus dont they? lol) or from another document the PCI divder table, so some bioses automatically use a higher divider when you overclock or lowers the HTL multi when you overclock.

Now we know some boards do have a PCI lock, I think in those boards the BIOSes properly turn on the lock, which is a differnet register than the official one. Also clockgen probably also turns this register on enabling the PCI lock.

hrhrhrFOOT · Apr 25, 2004

OMG same exact thing with my k8n, it starts locking at 201 fsb, and im running stable at 2275, 7.5*303.75
K8n pro is cheaper though

Maxvla · Apr 25, 2004

sent them an email.

Maxvla · Apr 25, 2004

hrhrhrFOOT said:
OMG same exact thing with my k8n, it starts locking at 201 fsb, and im running stable at 2275, 7.5*303.75
K8n pro is cheaper though

only a few dollars and the shuttle has more features

hrhrhrFOOT · Apr 25, 2004

Does it have dual bios? So that if you screw up, nothing happens?

Maxvla · Apr 25, 2004

hrhrhrFOOT said:
Does it have dual bios? So that if you screw up, nothing happens?

dual bios is a marketing gimmick.

i've never messed up my bios and don't plan to.

I.M.O.G. · Apr 25, 2004

Maxvla said:
i've never messed up my bios and don't plan to.

Hehehe, as opposed to those who set out with vendettas to mame and murder their bioses? ...I don't think many bios deaths are a product of "voluntary chipslaughter". But anyways, I agree and wouldn't ever bother with looking for something that featured a dual bios offering... Of course if my bios one day kamikazied itself, I suppose I might think differently.

Dunno what I would have to do wrong though, I've already tried about everything on this rig while learning the past few years - I think I would have got it by now if I were ever going to.

hrhrhrFOOT · Apr 25, 2004

I tend to kill stuff rather easily, so dual bios makes me happy

hrhrhrFOOT · Apr 25, 2004

My final verdict is that the k8npro, the an50r and the ak89l are probably your best bets for OCing the a64 using the nf3-150 platform.

nForce3 with a confirmed PCI lock was available at newegg for the last two months

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