ecs geforce6100sm-m pci-e x16 bios hack / revision ?

[kenji4life]

So I got in on a ecs geforce6100sm-m motherboard / 3800+ x2 am2 for 89 at fry's and I know that the pci-e lane is capped at x8 for whatever reason. I believe this is simply a bios cap, as the manual states that the slot is x16 and physically the board says "pci-e x16" next to the slot.

I was wondering if there were another bios that could be flashed to it that would unlock better capabilites or if this hasn't been tried. Or if it's worth trying..

An example would be the Asus M2N-MX board which is nearly identical except for 2 extra ram slots.

It just seems stupid to me that a board physically capable of x16 pci-e would be capped at x8

Let's keep the thread craps to a minimum. When one has nothing good to say, it is best for one to remain silent.

 

[hans007]

that board is the single chip geforce 6100.

most of the other variants are 2 chips . it physically does not have the lanes for a full x16. i believe the chip only has 10 lanes, 2 for x1 slots, and 1 for the x8 slot.

 

[kenji4life]

I see.. info source?

 

[frostedflakes]

Yup, this is a hardware limitation, not software. The slot is large enough to be compatible with PCI-E 16x, but only has 8x lanes of bandwidth available. FWIW I think a few review sites have tested these boards and even with pretty high-end cards (i.e. 7900GTX) I think the performance loss from 16x to 8x was typically only a few percent. Don't know how much it holds back next-gen cards like 8800 series, though.

 

[kenji4life]

Just wondering if it's worth buying a half-decent vidcard so that it can at least play some games.. I don't want to go all out on a vidcard when I know I'll be upgrading to a quadcore within the next few months.

guess I'll search for a vidcard that will rock out most games for under a hundred bucks at medium resolutions

 

[frostedflakes]

Both 7600GS and 7600GT can be found for close to or less than $100 and will be leaps and bounds ahead of onboard. If you'd be willing to spend a bit more I think X1950 Pro is supposed to offer great performance at ~$150.

You just looking for something to tide you over a year or two until DX10 cards and games become more mainstream?

 

[kenji4life]

Pretty much. Yeah I am aware of the options out there. I'm guessing that even at x8 the pci-e slot should still show an improvement over the limited bandwidth of AGP 8x..

I do plan on building a system later on.. Hopefully at which point we will start to see amd quad core, pci-e 2.0, ddr3, and widespread dx10 cards with hdcp

 

[kenji4life]

To get back on topic, unless anyone can show conclusive evidence otherwise, I will notate here for future searchers that the motherboard OP'ed is limited to x8 pci-e bandwidth, which starts to be shown when used with higher end graphics cards out at the time of this writing.

 

[tcsenter]

There is very little real-world performance difference between x8 and x16 lanes on all but the highest-end contemporary GPUs (e.g. 8800 GTX/GTS). Even then, its not more than 15%.

 

[kenji4life]

15% is however, a difference nonetheless.

Sometimes a difference can be disregarded, and sometimes it must be acknowledged. I believe when you are talking about building a gaming system this difference should be acknowledged, although not taken as seriously as other factors.

 

[tcsenter]

You're not building a serious gaming system out of an ECS Geforce6100SM-M mATX board. The Athlon 64 X2 3800 would bring your gaming performance down more than the PCI-E x8 slot. GF 8800 and X1950 need the fastest CPUs to take advantage of their full performance.

At best, You have a mid-range system there, no worries about PCI Express bandwidth unless you were thinking about using a graphics card that is wildly mismatched with the rest of your system (e.g. GF8800 or X1950XTX).

 

[kenji4life]

I never said I was, but again this is informational. The motherboard is constantly being given away practically free at fry's and I shouldn't have to remind you that this processor is both overclockable (yes even with this board) and plenty for a 'mid-range gaming system'

I never claimed to be building anything otherwise

But thanks for input. I think anyone spending 300+ on a video card can 'splurge' and get a motherboard that doesn't come free with an 80 dollar processor.