A8N-SLI Deluxe and nVidia nTune

[Octavean]

I have been basically attempting to assure a stable default installation on my A8N-SLI Deluxe (BIOS 1002) and I believe that I have now achieved it. Now I am looking to OC it a little.

When I fire up nTune I get a the following warning:

“PCI clock is currently set to track the HT BUS, If you adjust the clock for the HT BUS, the PCI BUS clock will change as well”

I see no explicit settings in the 1002 BIOS to lock the PCI BUS.

Is there a PCI lock in the 1003-005 Beta BIOS !?!

[paratus_]

Yes I think its a new feature in 1003.005. I'm using this bios atm and its far from perfect but its better than the others.

[Octavean]

Really, that would explain a few things,…..

Have you explicitly seen a PCI lock or is it an automatic feature of the 1003-005 BIOS?

With the 1002 BIOS there is what looks like a PCIe lock but I see no PCI lock.

I’ll likely have to go through a bit of trouble updating the BIOS since I am running a copy of WinXP Pro x64 edition evaluation.

I don’t think ASUS-update works with it and I don’t have a floppy installed in this system,…

Can you confirm that PCI locks are indeed in the 1003-005 BIOS?

Thanks,...

Oct.

[Enmore]

I'm getting my board next week (fingers crossed). According to my notes I scribbled down earlier:

BIOS 1002 to 1003.004:

You enable the PCI lock by raising the FSB/HTT to 201 Mhz or above in the BIOS


BIOS 1003.05:

There's now a manual setting in the 'jumperfree' section to let you set the PCI clock to 33.34 Mhz

It seems that when the BIOS overclocking options are set to 'auto', the PCI Bus follows the FSB/HTT. However, when the overclocking options are set to 'manual', the PCI Bus is locked, but the RAM clock still follows the FSB/HTT. Use the memory divider as required.

[jot]

1003-006 has it. Adds it in jumperless config.

[NeoNirvana]

According to Asus the PCI lock is supposedly enabled without a setting in 1002-1003.004, and there IS a lock in 1003.005 and higher. However, I noticed instability with 1002 and when I switched to 1003.005 and now to 1003.006 the instability was gone. Right now I'm using a 3DFX Voodoo3 on PCI, due to some shipping problems with my 6600GT, and I think the PCI lock was the cause of my problems. I reccomend 1003.006 bios personally, even though it is a beta I feel its the most reliable/stable bios out so far.

[Octavean]

Thanks a lot!!!

That was exactly the info I was looking for!

I would like to run the RAM at a 1:1 ratio as far as possible since I suspect that will yield the best performance.

I have some RAM coming in that should be able to push about 270MHz or so I am hopeful.

Looks like I’ll have to flash the BIOS to 1003-006.

[Enmore]

The BIOS revisions are coming thick and fast, so hopefully ASUS can work out the kinks on this motherboard before too long.

[Octavean]

Just a heads-up.

I went to:

Advanced>Jumperfree>CPU Frequency

and set the CPU Frequency to 201 up from the default 200 which has seemed fixed the PCI BUS to 33.

After I slap in a Floppy drive I'll flash to the latest beta BIOS.