"In Order Queue Depth"... on a BXMaster?

[Homer]

I've been reading with interest ViperGTS's thread in General Hardware. So I tried to find the bios setting described (title) on my BXMaster. No go.

Anyone got any ideas? Is there some differently named equivalent?

 

[Peter]

Intel 443BX north bridge chip does have a CPU bus In-Order Queue Depth setting, yet this can only be set in hardware (by jumper or soldered resistor).

To be honest, the CPU bus queue depth should always be set to maximum. The capability of reducing it to minimum depth is there to assist hardware debugging during mainboard development. (With deep queues, it's very hard to figure stuff out on logic analyzer equipment.)

Regards, Peter

 

[Homer]

Thanks Peter. If you followed the link above you should have seen the discussion of an adjustable setting in the bios of certain motherboards. Your explanation seems sensible, (I have to trust your facts, you obviously know more about this than I do), and consistent with my motherboard not having this setting, although it has the same chipset.

 

[Peter]

One can always make those hardware "strapping" options software steerable. That's what all those jumperless mainboards do for CPU, voltage, and whatever setting.

So as a mainboard design engineer, if you have a leftover "software jumper" on a BX board, then why not attach it to the "IOQD select" function? Then have the BIOS engineer write code to serve it, and there you go, software selectable queue depth on a BX board.

Regards, Peter