Does the NForce2 PCI/AGP lock affect performance???

[bobcpg]

And are the 200+ FSB Overclocks that you see use the PCI/AGP lock.

 

[adeno]

Not sure if I'm understanding your question on performance correctly, but nforce2 boards indeed have a AGP/PCI lock.. which allows you to set the fsb to any value (up to the limit on the BIOS) including 200+ MHz.

 

[k1114]

99%+ of all 200fsb or higher overclocks are using boards that have a pci lock. And no, the lock does not affect performance.

 

[Ketchup]

I had an Epox 8K3A that would do 215+ and it didn't have an AGP/PCI lock. Guess that puts me in the 1% bracket! (personally I think it's a little bigger than that.)

 

[rbV5]

I must be in the 1% as well, my IWILL rig will run 204 FSB using my unlocked t-bird with my current RAM due to the 1/6 divider...but I'm running my still locked XP 1600+ at 2200+ cause its faster. Some nice Corsair and an Unlocked t-bred and who knows?

 

[LostHiWay]

Actually the PCI/AGP lock does affect performance somewhat. If you had two nforce2 boards both running a 200mhz FSB and had the option of running the PCI/AGP either locked or unlocked. The one with the unlocked PCI/AGP bus would win in most benchmarks by a few %. However, most people including myself like the PCI/AGP lock because it stresses your hardware less and makes it easier to get stable.

 

[Pjotr]

Originally posted by: k1114
99%+ of all 200fsb or higher overclocks are using boards that have a pci lock. And no, the lock does not affect performance.

100.0 % of all nForce2 overclocks use PCI lock since nForce2 locks the PCI at 33 MHz, no matter what you change in BIOS.

AGP can be set to any frequency you like, regardless of your FSB setting, for example "locked" at 66 MHz, or you can overclock the AGP frequency without changing the FSB frequency etc...

But there is really no "lock", since all three frequencies, FSB/AGP/PCI are asynchronous and are set independantly of each other. There is no relation between them like on, for example, VIA boards which extract the AGP and PCI frequencies from dividing the FSB frequency.