Has AOpen implemented AGP/PCI lock on a VIA chipset mobo?

[MichaelD]

RE: AT's review of the AOpen AK-86-L mobo featuring the VIA K8T800 chipset.

On the BIOS page, to wit:

However, we were surprised that the PCI and AGP ratios changed in the BIOS as the FSB was adjusted. In every case, a new PCI/AGP ratio was selected that kept PCI/AGP as close to 33/66 as possible. If this is a correct readout, AOpen has managed to implement PCI/AGP lock in the VIA K8T800 BIOS. We do have a PCI Geiger on order to measure PCI speed, and we will report our findings here when we have measured the actual PCI speed changes.

Holy crap. I can't wait to see what the real deal is? Hey Wesley, did you run PCI Geiger on this thing yet?

If the buses really are locked (33.33 and 66.66MHz aren't going to run ANYTHING out of spec!!) than NVidia finally has some competition in the AMD CPU board arena!

Competition is good for everyone...especially us, the end-users.

The review is fairly positive IMO; a few "best evers" thrown in there.

Opinions?

 

[XMan]

Inquiring minds want to know.

Wasn't available at Newegg yet, last time I checked, though.

 

[foofoo]

mine has shipped from mwave. should be here wednesday and this will be my first step into the a64 world. i also felt that the review was quite positive and if the agp/pci lock is confirmed, this makes this a rockin board.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: foofoo
mine has shipped from mwave. should be here wednesday and this will be my first step into the a64 world. i also felt that the review was quite positive and if the agp/pci lock is confirmed, this makes this a rockin board.

I'll go out on a limb and say you're probably the FIRST ATer to have this board. Please post a "review" with your thoughts and findings...if this board is what it looks like it is...it could be VERY poplular. AOpen may have a Blue Ribbon winner on their hands!

 

[Ionizer86]

Is there a way to accurately find AGP/PCI speeds via Bios or Windows without any extra hardware, or would you have to use the geiger?

 

[foofoo]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: foofoo
mine has shipped from mwave. should be here wednesday and this will be my first step into the a64 world. i also felt that the review was quite positive and if the agp/pci lock is confirmed, this makes this a rockin board.

I'll go out on a limb and say you're probably the FIRST ATer to have this board. Please post a "review" with your thoughts and findings...if this board is what it looks like it is...it could be VERY poplular. AOpen may have a Blue Ribbon winner on their hands!

the way people change hardware around here, i'm sure that i'm not, but i'll write something about it anyway. it's coming with a a64 3200 and a thermaltake silent boost k8. if i get the chance, i'll take it into work and put an oscilloscope on the bus to try to verify the lock.

 

[wakedog102]

correct me if i'm wrong, but since the memory controller is on the A64 chips now, doesn't that directly limit the overclock potential? I just sent back a MSI K8T800 board and am waiting for an ASUS SK8V. I didn't go with AOpen because they didn't have the other features i need, like firewire, seperate promise RAID SATA controller etc, and getting a FSB bump with a lower multiplier is nice, but the overal speed increase may not be huge. Anyways, I don't overclock much, since I'd rather have a stable system I don't have to worry about. For all the gaming/best-bang-for-your-buckers this will probably be a lot of fun to have.

Hopefully other mobo makers can impliment this AGP lock on VIA chipset via a BIOS update. That would make everyone's boards better at overclocking.

Sidenote - can't wait for windows64. I do media/video stuff and it looks like the performance increases are going to be very nice.

 

[MichaelD]

TTT

 

[NFS4]

BUMP

 

[foofoo]

Hi,
Well, it came in this afternoon and I just have windows installed with updates, drivers, etc.
System is now...
Aopen 86-L
a64 3200+
Thermaltake Silent Boost K8
2 x 512 MB Kingston HyperX
Sapphire 9800 pro 128
Hercules Fortissimo III
pci 1394 card
Seagate 120GB 8MB cache SATA HD
Coolermaster Wavemaster
Antec 400W PS
XP SP1 with latest updates, etc..
that's the system. it is running very stably now. The installation was very smooth. Aopen even included the VIA SATA RAID driver disk so I didnt have to go to their website to download it. Even better, they included the molex to SATA power adapter for those of us with older power supplies. The board is nice, good fit and finish, lots of fan headers. The onboard USB headers are in a bad place almost directly under the video card, but you can make it fit. The board is kind of on the small side, it uses only 6 mounting screws.

The things of note are:
1) The VIA USB 2.0 drivers on the drivers CD do not work. They will not install. You have to download the drivers from the VIA website.
2) The bios that came with it is v1.02. The bios as tested in the Anandtech review is 1.06. The newest one on the Aopen website is 1.04. I wrote to Wesley Fink and he kindly sent me the bios update to 1.06 and told me that he would post it for others. If you cant find it, let me know and I'll either send it to you, or if too many people ask, I'll host it somewhere. There are two versions, one allows flashing from within windows. I tried it and it worked fine.
3) This board does NOT come with firewire, be sure to order a separate card if you need 1394 (I do).


Here's some old style benchmarks
PCmark2002 CPU=6551, MEM=8933, HDD=1258
3Dmark2001 = 19398

The Aopen nmonitor tells me that the CPU temp is 34.5C just after benchmarking. 32.0C just sitting.

Anyone have any questions? let me know.
My impressions are very positive so far. This seems like a sweet motherboard.
As for the system overall. It's very fast and even better, it's really quiet. It's probably the quietest computer I've ever had.

If I get a chance this weekend I'll take it into work and check out the AGP/PCI lock.

 

[MichaelD]

Hey foofoo, thanks for reporting back! :beer:

Those scores look pretty darn good. I'm sure with a bit of BIOS tweaking they'd go up a little more, too!

Too bad about no onboard Firewire...kind of a necessity these days.

Interesting (and kind of sad...) that Via wouldn't have the latest bios on their site.

Nice of Wesley to hook you up!

Does MBM5 work w/this board? Lots of fan headers is a good thing.

Good luck w/the board and keep us updated, please.

 

[shiftomnimega]

Good thread. I'll be either purchasing this mobo or the ECS 755-A2 next week... IF ECS EVER RELEASES IT TO THE US.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: shiftomnimega
Good thread. I'll be either purchasing this mobo or the ECS 755-A2 next week... IF ECS EVER RELEASES IT TO THE US.

STAY AWAY FROM ECS!!!! Just get the AOpen

 

[foofoo]

Originally posted by: shiftomnimega
Good thread. I'll be either purchasing this mobo or the ECS 755-A2 next week... IF ECS EVER RELEASES IT TO THE US.

I was actually waiting for this one too, but the positive review of the aopen got my attention.

Those scores look pretty darn good. I'm sure with a bit of BIOS tweaking they'd go up a little more, too!

true, i havent had time to tweak anything. mem is by spd, all else is default. over the next week, i'll try out some tweaks and a bit of overclocking. the temps really look good. i'll also check mbm5 when i get the chance.
i'll report more as i figure it out.

 

[billyjak]

Aopen is starting to get serious again like they did with their old AX6BC motherboard. I still have it running like a champ.
Their new CDRW burners come with 3 faceplates and score pretty well.
I was waiting for them to make a comeback and from the review it looks promising.
They are looking better each release. Catering to the enthusiast now.

 

[NFS4]

I'm gonna order an AOpen board (this would be my FIFTH Socket 754 board:Q)

FIC K8T800 -- came in a bundle with my Athlon 3200+, but VERY barebones and no O/C
Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there
ECS 755-A SiS755 -- totally screwed on this one. No real DDR400 support. Crashed like crazy
Biostar nForce3 - works GREAT except for one problem. Whenever I have a lot of hard drive activity on my Raptor, I get all kinds of distorted lines in my TV playback with my Leadtek TV Tuner (Serial-ATA runs of the PCI bus on this board...that should explain it).


So I'm gonna try my luck with the AOpen board

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: NFS4
I'm gonna order an AOpen board (this would be my FIFTH Socket 754 board:Q)

FIC K8T800 -- came in a bundle with my Athlon 3200+, but VERY barebones and no O/C
Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there
ECS 755-A SiS755 -- totally screwed on this one. No real DDR400 support. Crashed like crazy
Biostar nForce3 - works GREAT except for one problem. Whenever I have a lot of hard drive activity on my Raptor, I get all kinds of distorted lines in my TV playback with my Leadtek TV Tuner (Serial-ATA runs of the PCI bus on this board...that should explain it).


So I'm gonna try my luck with the AOpen board

Damn! You've tested more skt754 boards than most review sites :beer:

 

[foofoo]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: NFS4
I'm gonna order an AOpen board (this would be my FIFTH Socket 754 board:Q)

FIC K8T800 -- came in a bundle with my Athlon 3200+, but VERY barebones and no O/C
Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there
ECS 755-A SiS755 -- totally screwed on this one. No real DDR400 support. Crashed like crazy
Biostar nForce3 - works GREAT except for one problem. Whenever I have a lot of hard drive activity on my Raptor, I get all kinds of distorted lines in my TV playback with my Leadtek TV Tuner (Serial-ATA runs of the PCI bus on this board...that should explain it).


So I'm gonna try my luck with the AOpen board

Damn! You've tested more skt754 boards than most review sites :beer:

Yeah, and the scary part is they all had problems!!!
I'm happy with the aopen so far, hopefully this'll be the one that works for you

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: foofoo

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: NFS4
I'm gonna order an AOpen board (this would be my FIFTH Socket 754 board:Q)

FIC K8T800 -- came in a bundle with my Athlon 3200+, but VERY barebones and no O/C
Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there
ECS 755-A SiS755 -- totally screwed on this one. No real DDR400 support. Crashed like crazy
Biostar nForce3 - works GREAT except for one problem. Whenever I have a lot of hard drive activity on my Raptor, I get all kinds of distorted lines in my TV playback with my Leadtek TV Tuner (Serial-ATA runs of the PCI bus on this board...that should explain it).


So I'm gonna try my luck with the AOpen board

Damn! You've tested more skt754 boards than most review sites :beer:

Yeah, and the scary part is they all had problems!!!
I'm happy with the aopen so far, hopefully this'll be the one that works for you

I just placed an order with MWave

 

[Markfw]

From NFS4:

Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there

So what were the problems ? The only problem I have is no 64 bit drivers for my 64 bit XP install.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
From NFS4:

Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there

So what were the problems ? The only problem I have is no 64 bit drivers for my 64 bit XP install.

Didn't like to shutdown sometimes when I would hit restart. Sometimes wouldn't recognize my optical drives.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: NFS4

Originally posted by: Markfw900
From NFS4:

Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there

So what were the problems ? The only problem I have is no 64 bit drivers for my 64 bit XP install.

Didn't like to shutdown sometimes when I would hit restart. Sometimes wouldn't recognize my optical drives.

Never had either of those problems under any of my 3 boot partitions, 98, 2k or XP (now 64 bit)

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: foofoo
Hi,
Well, it came in this afternoon and I just have windows installed with updates, drivers, etc.
System is now...
Aopen 86-L
a64 3200+

Can you confirm that Cool ?n? Quiet? is working with the new 1.06 bios?

 

[RanDum72]

So whats the deal with this mobo? does it have AGP/PCI lock or not?

 

[WebDude]

Originally posted by: NFS4
I'm gonna order an AOpen board (this would be my FIFTH Socket 754 board:Q)

FIC K8T800 -- came in a bundle with my Athlon 3200+, but VERY barebones and no O/C
Asus K8V K8T800 -- had some niggling bugs here and there
ECS 755-A SiS755 -- totally screwed on this one. No real DDR400 support. Crashed like crazy
Biostar nForce3 - works GREAT except for one problem. Whenever I have a lot of hard drive activity on my Raptor, I get all kinds of distorted lines in my TV playback with my Leadtek TV Tuner (Serial-ATA runs of the PCI bus on this board...that should explain it).


So I'm gonna try my luck with the AOpen board

How many of those boards went back under RMA? I've already sent 2 back myself (ECS 755-A SiS755 and MSI K8T Neo FSR2), and I've read a lot of posts about others returning their boards too. I get the impression that a LOT of Athlon64 boards are making round trips between the vendor and the customer.