What do the TURBO settings on P4B266-C do?

I wanted to know what exactly do these settings do?

Turbo 1 fixes PCI/AGP bus speeds to 36/72, Turbo 2 fixes to a higher speed but no-one has reported what that speed is yet. I haven't been able to test this myself with an oscilloscope but it has been widely reported in other forums by people who have.

Sounds like bullsxxx. There is atleast 2dozen P4B266 reviews on wed and none of them has word of it. I bet they all can´t be that dum???

i have one

1> Turbo 2 just hoses your system so you can't boot

2> Normal and turbo 1 show no difference in memory or games scores from my testing.

I leave it at turbo1 just so I can put a "turbo" sticker on my case.

ariman said:

Sounds like bullsxxx. There is atleast 2dozen P4B266 reviews on wed and none of them has word of it. I bet they all can´t be that dum???

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No, they're not dumb, they just didn't bother finding out what turbo mode did. I haven't seen a single reference to what turbo mode actually does in any of the reviews. A guy over at www.hardforums.com called Ase tested a variety of FSB speeds with turbo 1 enabled and confirmed that it fixes PCI/AGP speeds. I think he used a PCI testing card or an oscilloscope, I don't remember which. If you choose to believe it's rubbish then that's fine....

Scotto46 - It's the same for everyone, Turbo 1 doesn't improve memory performance at all. Turbo 2 doesn't work on my PC either. I'll bet that Turbo sticker is pimptastic!!

Game PC:

One thing we did notice in the BIOS is that there is a "memory optimization" menu with "Turbo 1" and "Turbo 2" settings. While the BIOS or manual don't explain what these settings actually do, it's most likely a setting which pulls tighter timings on the DRAM at the potential cost of stability. We were not even able to boot into Windows with "Turbo 2" enabled, while using "Turbo 1" actually dropped our memory scores. Great optimization there, Asus!

http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=p4b266&page=4&mscssid=&tp=

LOSTCIRCUITS:

The CHIP Configuration submenu offers the typical settings found elsewhere with the detailed listings of all memory parameters such as CAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, bank interleaving appears to be enabled automatically. As in other I845D chipset boards, the idle timer, that is, the counter that closes a page after a certain number of idle cycles can be set from 0 cycles to infinite, my personal recommendation is to set it to 16 or 64 cycles. Other settings like Optimization Mode (Normal, Turbo or Turbo2) are somewhat vague in what they will actually do.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/asus_p4b266/6.shtml

For example?

And if we are lucky I can test it today: I might get My board back from RMA, just might. If not, We´ll see it next week.

Yea, Turbo2 made me think I had a bad Motherboard, I had set it by accident and when I powered off the system it would not post. I spent three hours tracking it down, changed the Turbo2 to normal and all is well.

Rick

Coz said:

No, they're not dumb, they just didn't bother finding out what turbo mode did. I haven't seen a single reference to what turbo mode actually does in any of the reviews. A guy over at www.hardforums.com called Ase tested a variety of FSB speeds with turbo 1 enabled and confirmed that it fixes PCI/AGP speeds. I think he used a PCI testing card or an oscilloscope, I don't remember which. If you choose to believe it's rubbish then that's fine....

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I received My board yesterday. Today I had time to find out what this Turbo does for AGP/PCI devider.
I dont have oscilloscope, but I have ASUS manual and SiSoft Sandra: Both confirm there is no AGP/PCI fix on P4B266, with or w/o Turbo. Sorry.

I called Asus tech support and asked one of the techs there. This was his exact line "It makes your computer better" They need to hire some people who have a clue.

1)The guy at [H]ard Forums that tested the PCI/AGP bus with an ocilliscope got a reading of 35.8/71.6Mhz, "fixed"(i.e. - at any FSB) for the Turbo 1 setting.

2)I can't imagine how locking the PCI/AGP bus speed could give lower benchmark scores.

3)I called Asus tech support last week about this issue and the "fixed at 1:1divider above 132FSB" issue. The 13yr old technician had no idea what I was even talking about when I asked him about "Turbo 1 & 2". His reply to my question about a new BIOS that would give an adjustable divider above 132 FSB was "well, I haven't heard about anything but if there is a new BIOS it's usually posetd on the German site" Thanks for the A+ support guys!

Another user (Colton) has confirmed that Turbo 1 locks PCI/AGP speeds, this time using a PC Geiger PCI Bus analyzer. You can read about his testing here. It looks pretty conclusive now. I trust these guy's results because they're testing the PCI bus with hardware, a program like Sandra probably guesses the PCI speed based on the FSB and the PCI divider it thinks you're using.