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

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: 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.

Sold the FIC on eBay...didn't lose but a few bucks
Sold the Asus on eBay...lost about 5 bucks
RMA'd the ECS with no restocking fee
Going to RMA the Biostar board

 

[XBoxLPU]

I am having no problems with my Asus K8V Deluxe

 

[CAK]

Havn't tried the asus yet, but I have spent a good amount of time with the MSI K8T NEO and the AOpen MK86-L. In comparing the 2 the Aopen is easily the best by design. Better VRM and higher quality mosfets, better tracing. Of the 3 K8T's I had they were also fairly picky of what ram was used, even with BIOS 1.2. Had a few other quirks as well. The Aopen had no troubles with any of the ram i tried.

Do the dividers - PCI/AGP lock work? I don't know. The only test i could try was taking an older PCI sound card that came bundled with some music editing software i bought years ago. I wouldn't work past 35mhz im one of my older systems, tried in in the aopen With a 3000+@2240mhz and the card still works fine. So maybe theres hope.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: CAK
Havn't tried the asus yet, but I have spent a good amount of time with the MSI K8T NEO and the AOpen MK86-L. In comparing the 2 the Aopen is easily the best by design. Better VRM and higher quality mosfets, better tracing. Of the 3 K8T's I had they were also fairly picky of what ram was used, even with BIOS 1.2. Had a few other quirks as well. The Aopen had no troubles with any of the ram i tried.

Do the dividers - PCI/AGP lock work? I don't know. The only test i could try was taking an older PCI sound card that came bundled with some music editing software i bought years ago. I wouldn't work past 35mhz im one of my older systems, tried in in the aopen With a 3000+@2240mhz and the card still works fine. So maybe theres hope.

Cool. Not a definitive test by any means, but PROMISING, nonetheless. Thanks for volunteering that. It would be a great thing for everyone if Via actually pulled it off.

I'm personally waiting for the NF3-250..but only b/c I just dumped a wad of dough into my present rig....

 

[NFS4]

My AOpen board shipped today. Should be here Monday. Woot!!

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: NFS4
My AOpen board shipped today. Should be here Monday. Woot!!

Cool. Expecting a full report, ESPECIALLY about the AGP/PCI bus-thing. Pleeeeeeeeeease?

Good luck, Brandon.

 

[NFS4]

PCI Speed and Overclocking: A Closer Look at A64 and P4 Chipsets

 

[shiftomnimega]

Sux don't it?

Oh well, I'm still gonna buy it if they drop cpu prices.

 

[foofoo]

wow,
just read this before i took my pc into work today (holiday) to probe the bus with an oscilloscope to see if the lock was really implemented or not. guess we have the answer now. damn.
and whats up with that bios that shows it?
edit***************
however, i still am lovin this board and a64 setup. best pc so far.

 

[Ionizer86]

Wow, all the A64 boards didn't have the lock implemented. Out of curiosity, if nForce 3 boards have no lock, is there really a lock on nForce 2 boards?

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Ionizer86
Wow, all the A64 boards didn't have the lock implemented. Out of curiosity, if nForce 3 boards have no lock, is there really a lock on nForce 2 boards?

There most certainly is an AGP/PCI lock on NF2 motherboards! That's a well-known and documented fact. That's the sole reason why 99% of AthlonXP owners run an NF2 board. I'm sitting at 200MHz FSB on my 8RDA+; w/o a lock, I doubt the board would even boot, let alone run like the champ it is.

Nice followup by Wesley, BTW. Cool to see that PC Geiger thing in action.

So, we still don't know if Via has done it or not? Judging by the results in that article, this page in particular, I'd say NO.

Though the NF3150 doesn't have a lock, the NF3250 is supposed to have one...read that somewhere...it BETTER! :Q I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't.

Then again, even a non-overclocked A64 3200 beats the snot out of my current rig.

 

[jm0ris0n]

Hehe, sitting high and pretty @ my 209Mhz fsb speed on my 8rda+ too This board is hard to beat! Vivia, la Nvidia!

 

[Ionizer86]

There most certainly is an AGP/PCI lock on NF2 motherboards! That's a well-known and documented fact.

I guess my post was more of a "if the nForce 2 really has a lock, and it has been shown to exist by enthusiasts, why couldn't they impelment a lock in the nF3-150?" In any case, the only way I could think of for testing my NF2 board's lock is to run my FSB at 165 and then see how stable it is from there

 

[NFS4]

NEED IMMEDIATE HELP!!! I have my shuttle board rigged up on top of my system so that I can test this!!

The board WON'T detect my SATA Raptor drive and it DOESN'T have setting in the BIOS to set the SATA mode to IDE or RAID. WTF is up with that?

It won't detect the SATA at all!!! I even downloaded the 1.04 BIOS from Aopen's website.

PICS:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~bahill2/aopen-1.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~bahill2/aopen-2.jpg
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~bahill2/aopen-3.jpg