ECS 865PE-A OC'ing with SATA

[neverender]

Here's the deal... ECS 865PE-A with a p4 2.4b. With a regular old Maxtor IDE hard drive i could get to 155 fsb no problem.

Got a new sata drive (Samsung 160gb 7200 8mb) and after getting a sata cable that worked (the one with the board was crap) installed windows and everything is good. I have the drive set up to act like its on primary IDE master, and took the old maxtor IDE drive out, so the new samsung 160 is the only one in there.

Here's the problem, when I try to set the fsb to anything above 133, the bios will not see the sata drive. Even at 134fsb, it detects it 1/3 times and cannot make it to windows xp. However on 133fsb everything works just fine. When I introduced the sata drive to the system it will not overclock. Any ideas are much appreciated.

 

[o1die]

Check the ecs website for any bios upgrades, but be careful flashing the bios. Ecs programs are spartan just like their manuals. I have several of their boards, but I don't overclock any of them. The boards aren't designed for it.

 

[neverender]

yeah another thing i did...upgrade the bios. i have the latest one, about 2 months old. eh..yeah im probably going to get another mobo soon anyway and use this ECS as a spare. any recommendations for boards with sata, dual channel memory with exceptional overclocking ability (and preferably dual bios =) because i'm kinda new to intel cpus...

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: neverender
yeah another thing i did...upgrade the bios. i have the latest one, about 2 months old. eh..yeah im probably going to get another mobo soon anyway and use this ECS as a spare. any recommendations for boards with sata, dual channel memory with exceptional overclocking ability (and preferably dual bios =) because i'm kinda new to intel cpus...

I got an ECS 848P-A in a combo deal with a P4 3.2, and I'm replacing it with an Abit IS7. I haven't had any problems with my Abit NF7-S, and I'm hoping their Intel line is no different.

 

[Odeen]

SATA requires a stable 100mhz signal. If the motherboard is not capable of changing the FSB while holding PCI, AGP and SATA clocks stable, you DON'T want to use it to OC.

All older boards + newer but low end boards are capable of setting the AGP and PCI clocks as a ratio to the FSB. FSB = 100, AGP should be at 2/3, PCI at 1/3. The reason the BX died was that it couldn't do a 1/2 AGP divider, so, at 133mhz, AGP was running a toasty 89mhz, which most cards couldn't handle.

Newer boards have independent clock generators for the FSB and for AGP/PCI. This way, they can hold the AGP/PCI clocks at 66/33 (and, as a side benefit, SATA at 100mhz) while letting you change FSB at will. However, some boards, while supporting MORE ratios (all the way down to AGP at 2/7 FSB speed on my Abit IC7) don't have this ability

Basically, if you go from 133 (which has a nicely defined set of ratios - AGP 1/2, PCI 1/4 and SATA 3/4) to 155, your PCI and AGP speeds are still somewhat acceptable, but SATA will not receive a usable clock signal.

You really shouldn't overclock on a board that doesn't allow for voltage changes anyway.

 

[Zap]

LOL, had the same problem with my MSI PT880 chipset board. 133 worked great, 135+ never worked and 134 sometimes worked with SATA. Dissapointing.

 

[Odeen]

Via has NOT had AGP/PCI lock in its chipset until the latest K8. Those are the breaks.