Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 Overclocking Questions

[Eaglaras]

Hey all,
I would like to ask a few questions about the GA-K8NXP-9 motherboard.
I plan to raise the fsb, so I need to know a few things.
1)Does it have a working PCI-E/PCI lock?

I use both Sata and older ide drives. Will the NForce 4 sata ports be locked?
Will the IDE channels be locked? I will use 2 IDE hard drives, 1 DVD player and 1 DVD burner.

Will the PCI-E slots (including the vga slot) be locked? I don't want to risk damaging my x850xt pe card....

Will the PCI slots be locked? As I use an audigy soundcard etc..

Will there be problems with the onboard ethernet(network) adapter (it's on the pci-e bus)?
will it be locked too?

Also I must say that I don't own the motherboard yet. I am about to buy it but I would like to know the above things 1st.

 

[o1die]

I would call gigabyte tech support if you don't get any answers. I called to ask about warranty and rma procedures before purchasing one of their boards. Gigabyte doesn't even include the warranty info in the manual. It's 3 years, and they do accept rma's, but they don't make it as easy as some other manufacturers.

 

[Eaglaras]

Yea, I called gigabyte. But I doubt they will give me a good answer. And they say I have to wait until February 15th because of their Chinese New Year holidays.

I heard many people in this forum say they overclock their cpu with GA-K8NXP-9 Motherboard. They must know how to deal with the issues I mention in the 1st post. So can any1 help me?

 

[Eaglaras]

bump!

 

[Rand]

1. It does have a working PCi/PCI-E lock, and the PCI/PCI-E bus speeds are also manually adjustable in 1MHz increments as well.

2. All SATA ports (4) driven by the nForce4 chipset are locked, all 4 ports driven by the Sil3114CT176 chip are not locked.

3. PATA channels operate over the PCI bus which as mentioned is locked.

4. Refer to answer #1, yes the PCI bus is locked.

5. The board uses nVidia's integrated Gigabit Ethernet, which operates on it's own dedicated bus (Similar to Intel's CSA), so you won't have to work about it ever operating out of spec.
The second Gigabit Ethernmetr driven by the Marvell 8053 operates over the PCI bus, which as mentioned is locked.

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: Rand

2. All SATA ports are locked.

While I hope this is correct, I remember threads in which people claimed that only SATA ports 3 and 4 were locked. Is this an NF4 feature, or is it an implementation feature for each MB?

And remember that there are EIGHT SATA ports on the NF4 Ultra, 4 Nvidia and 5 Sil. Are they all locked automatically?

 

[Rand]

Edited my post above, I wasn't thinking about the extra ports driven by the SI chip... thanks for reminding me.
My apologies for the error.

Originally posted by: shira
Is this an NF4 feature, or is it an implementation feature for each MB?

Implementation specific.
Almost any board should have the ports driven by the nForce4 chipset locked if it's an half way decent design... that's relatively simple and straightforward for the manufacturer.

The add-on SI chip in it's most basic native implementation isn't locked though, with some fair bit of extra effort and thought put into the implementation on a motherboard it would be possible to lock the ports though. (Within a small margin of error)

The cost and extra time involved in the workaround to lock the ports probably isn't cost effective for most motherboard manufaturers to bother with though.

 

[blinky2004]

Surely the SiL Raid chip is attached via the PCI bus (or possibly, but unlikely PCI-Express) therefore if the PCI bus is locked then the SiL RAID chip will be locked?