ECS Nforce3-A SATA and Overclocking(question)

[Zachariah]

Hi. I'm new to the forums. I just purchased an ECS Nforce3-A with a Venice core 3000+ cpu socket 754 off ebay

I know 754 really isn't going to get me anywhere in the long haul but I wanted to step up to 64 bit and I'm not done with my 6800 agp card just yet so I couldn't pass up the combo for 100 bucks.

Now to my question. I have heard horror stories about the Nforce3 chipset and overclocking while using SATA hard drives. I had planned to go SATA with this build but now I'm hesitant to buy the SATA drives. Apparently on several Nforce3 boards only SATA ports 3 and 4 are locked while 1 and 2 are not protected by the pci/agp lock. I was just curious, seeing as the ECS version I have only has 2 SATA ports if I will experience any trouble when overclocking and using SATA. I guess I was just hoping someone would know, and hopefully ECS locked the ports somehow on their "budget" board; hey a guy can dream right?

My goal is to get the 3000+ venice at 2.5ghz(default 10x200 to oc'd 10x250), which doesn't seem to far out of reason with those chips, and will work perfectly with the 250 HTT cap on the ECS board. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

******EDIT*******

OK I think I may have found the answer to my question elsewhere. Apparently the SATA was only messing up on boards which used 4 SATA ports because the Nforce3 250 chipset only supports 2 SATA natively. Boards with 4 where using 2 PHY ports which were not locked. That is my understanding at this time anyway. So with any luck when my board arrives in a few days I'll be able to hit that 250HTT overclock

 

[Zap]

I think there were a few issues reported around here with the ECS board and SATA, but they may have been driver issues.

$100? You should have looked for the combo at select Fry's for $70.

 

[Zachariah]

Yeah I have heard good things about Fry's although I've never actually shopped there. I only paid 80 for the board and cpu but the guy had 20 shipping, some of which may go into his pocket, but overall still a good deal for me.

Also, in your review you said the 250HTT cap may be passed with clockgen but I have never used the program. Did you ever try that ? Anyways, I won't know how any of the hardware performs until I get the board in a few days.

And in response to the driver statement, I found that on a lot of sites people said the board drivers were outdated badly so you're probably right, at least I hope heh.

 

[furballi]

Update to the latest ECS BIOS. There should not be any issue with SATA Seagate HDDs. You can cross-flash with the BIOSTAR BIOS if you want to set the BIOS higher than 250MHz FSB. Note that you will lose the SMART fan option with the BIOSTAR BIOS.

 

[Zachariah]

Well I don't know how much I will end up overclocking the 3000+. I am so used to my old xpm system that any kind of 64bit will be refreshing Thanks for the info about the biostar bios. Would you say its worth the loss of SMART fan to get 250+FSB? Like I said I have never oc'd a 64bit system or really worked with one so I don't know much about the temps, although from what I read they seem to run very cool.

 

[furballi]

Probably not. Course if you have a good chip, then it would be nice if you can run the CPU at +2.7GHz. Use Clockgen in Windows to confirm that the chip is stable at 2.7GHz.

I have a Zalman 7700Cu spinning at a constant 970 rpm. Don't have to use SMART fan to keep the system cool n quiet.

 

[Zachariah]

Yeah that sounds like a good idea. I am also happy to see I can use the single rank memory on this board because it sells so much cheaper than dual-rank stuff. Although I don't know if the overclocking is any better or worse using single rank..just that the mobo supports 2 single ranks at 400mhz and two dual-ranks at 333.

 

[Zachariah]

Originally posted by: furballi
Probably not. Course if you have a good chip, then it would be nice if you can run the CPU at +2.7GHz. Use Clockgen in Windows to confirm that the chip is stable at 2.7GHz.

I have a Zalman 7700Cu spinning at a constant 970 rpm. Don't have to use SMART fan to keep the system cool n quiet.

Hey I hate to bump an old posting but I wanted to ask you something now that I have all the parts for my build in and finished. Are you using the Zalman 7700Cu with the nforce3-a? Space on the board seems a little tight but it sounds like it would be nice for overclocking if it would fit. I got it (venice 3000+) running at 2.4ghz stable on stock cooling with almost no problem but I'd like better cooling to go higher.

 

[o1die]

Yeah, I bought the Fry's combo for $90 yesterday for the second time. I returned the first one, and saved $10 by waiting. But it will be a few days until I set it up. Someone else had lan driver issues with it, and recommended you bypass ecs drivers and use just the sound driver on the motherboard cd. He recommended going to nvidia's website to load the chipset driver, which includes the lan.