SATA and Overclocking AMD/Intel Platform

[Diablo]

I am planning to buy a new computer, which I intend to O/C.
The thing is: I heard that the SATA controllers on the NForce don't do well while O/C the system.
Can anyone confirm this ? and secound, I wanted to know if the 865/875 Chipsets of intel suffer from this problem too (I think most of them use 3rd company controllers)

I was thinking of buying an A64 3000 + Nforce3 or Northwood 2.4-2.8 + 865PE or Barton 2500-2700 + Nforce2 400.
Any recommendation to help me solve this dilema would be appreciated..

Thanks.

[sharkypinoy]

i think it only affects AMD64 platform, i havn't heard anyting for INTEL or AMD-XP set ups

[WildWeasel]

I'm assuming that the SATA problems only occur on earlier nF3 chipsets with no PCI/AGP lock. This problem does not exist with 865 or nF2 chipsets, AFAIK.

Intel's ICH5 (which is the southbridge for the 865 chipsets) and ICH6 have internal SATA controllers. I don't know about nF2 or earlier nF3. I'm almost positive that nF3 250 has internal SATA controllers.

[jessem]

I'm assuming that the SATA problems only occur on earlier nF3 chipsets with no PCI/AGP lock. This problem does not exist with 865 or nF2 chipsets, AFAIK

I have the mobo in my sig-just built and my understanding is that sata lock on 33mhz only occurs on sata connected directly to chipset which on this mobo is 3 and 4-naturally I read this after I set mine up on 1 and 2. oh well LOL

[r'aggro]

nForce 2 and barton shouldn't be a problem, I use a sata drive and have still run in the 240's.

I posted a similar topic last week after seeing Anand getting a way better fsb overclock when using IDE. (246 vs 230) This was on an nF3 board (asus) with a working agp/pci lock, but I don't think this happens to every nF3 board. the dfi mobo didn't seem affected by this.

Intel; I have no idea

[bisonator]

so if there is an AGP/PCI lock at 66/33, you are saying the SATA controller operates outside the PCI bus?

[REMF]

maybe i'm just being dumb, but with the memory bus on the CPU there chipset should not be overclocked at all as long as the motherboard has a HT divider option which will allow it to remain at 800/1000?

eg.

s939 A64-3200+ @ 2000/200MHz with 1000MHz HT on a 5x multi
O/C'ed to:
s939 A64-3200+ @ 2500/250MHz with 1000MHz HT on a 4x multi

as long as the HT can be adjusted back to its proper setting it should not affect the chipset at all............ or am i entirely wrong?

cheers

REMF

[Diablo]

Well, just for your information:
I bought yesterday the Abit IC7-G (875P) + 2.4A Prescott, 160 GB Western Digital SATA , and 2*256 A-Data PC32000.

The findings:
On the MOBO I have support for 4 SATA devices (2 via Intel ICH5R south bridge, and 2 via Silicon Image 3112 raid controller) and 4 IDE dvices.

1. If I connect a SATA HD to the Intel controller, I can't do almost any overclock at all !!

2. If I connect a SATA HD to the Silicon Image controller which resides on the pci bus, I can overclock without a problem with AGP\PCI lock on (I havn't tried without the lock yet).

If anyone plans to o/c his rig, don't use the Intel controller, it sucks!

[Kero-chan]

from what i've seen at anandtech most the nforce3 boards do NOT do well with OCing and SATA. however i think the dfi lanparty doesnt have this problem. they have a review about the board at anandtech with OCing results, but i cant remember the specifics.

[WildWeasel]

Originally posted by Diablo
1. If I connect a SATA HD to the Intel controller, I can't do almost any overclock at all !!

If anyone plans to o/c his rig, don't use the Intel controller, it sucks!

I find it hard to believe that ICH5 is at fault. You must have the PCI/AGP lock or some other setting messed up. Think about it - a P4C is at 200MHz FSB stock, and you're starting way down at 133MHz. There's no way you're hitting any kind of hardware limit there...

[Diablo]

Hi!
well, I do see your point about the ICH5, but I don't have much settings to "mess up" with in the bios. All there is, is that AGP/PCI lock and that's all. I saw you have a similar MOBO with SATA HD. Did you encountered any problems while overclocking ? and if you can, please detail here your seetings in bios regrding the cpu and bus speed + locks.
Thanks!

[WildWeasel]

I'm currently at about 2.8 GHz, but when my northbridge fan still worked I was at about 3.1 GHz and my only "instability" was memory errors in Prime95.

Aside from setting the AGP/PCI lock, I don't think I changed anything. I'm not a much of an overclocker, but there are bunch of OC madmen here that use/used the IC7 series. Hopefully some of 'em will chime in here...

[Tahoe9166]

I have a SATA drive on the ICH5 and it works just fine, my 2.4c is happily at 3.3GHz and has been for over a year, not a single hiccup. Not sure if this helps much, cause I have the 865 chipset, but otherwise my IS7 and your IC7-G are very similar.

[Diablo]

Well, some how I did managed to get it work, I disabled the bus mastering and one of the unused IDE channels and lot's of other things like the Silicon Image controller, the Parallel port and stuff like this.

Thanks anyway