1/6 divider on Soyo KT400?

[BeAsTy]

After reading the article and confirming thru email to the author, it appears the Soyo Dragon KT400 has a 1/6 divider!!!! No more ali magik!!

 

[Soulkeeper]

too bad 1/6 isn't enough...

i want a 1/7 or higher
or better yet have like the P4 boards and have it locked
but that's just me wanting to overclock things and push stuff to it's max
ohh well

 

[Vette73]

No, I thought 1/5 is for 166mhz, and 1/6 would be I guess 200Mhz area.

But yes I agree, I wish there was just a PCI/AGP lock, that way it would not matter what divider it had.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
No, I thought 1/5 is for 166mhz, and 1/6 would be I guess 200Mhz area.

But yes I agree, I wish there was just a PCI/AGP lock, that way it would not matter what divider it had.

you are correct and here's hoping for a AGP/PCI lock on AMD boards as well

 

[First]

To this day, I still haven't received a reason why motherboard makers don't just add in an AGP/PCI lock. I've asked m/b makers countless times, and it still seems as if they simply don't know or really care that much. Well, overclocking isn't for everyone I guess.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb
To this day, I still haven't received a reason why motherboard makers don't just add in an AGP/PCI lock. I've asked m/b makers countless times, and it still seems as if they simply don't know or really care that much. Well, overclocking isn't for everyone I guess.

Can you answer this??
Is the AGP/PCI Lock part of the Northbridge or another chip??
And do you think maybe a Chipmaker (SiS, VIA, etc...) says we will sell you our chip IF you don't do......

 

[Technonut]

After reading the article and confirming thru email to the author, it appears the Soyo Dragon KT400 has a 1/6 divider!!!! No more ali magik!!

Evan Lieb, You reviewed the board... Are you stating that you actually ran the board with the 1/6 divider set and functioning? From what I gather, The clock generator supports the 1/6 divider. The KT400 chipset does not.

The ABIT AT7 MAX2 had the divider in the shipping BIOS, but the board will not boot with it enabled. There was a beta BIOS that removed the 1/6 divider completely. ABIT now has an official updated BIOS (B7) released. I have not flashed to it yet, but I suspect that the 1/6 divider is not present.


EDIT: From the AnandTech SOYO Dragon KT400 review:

In addition, you get some very nice PCI Divider options that go up to a value of 6. Thankfully you get official 333MHz FSB Athlon XP support with the KT400 Ultra, so you should be able to just drop in AMD's future 333MHz FSB CPUs with ease.

We decided to lower the CPU multiplier from 12.5X to 8X, and see if we could hit 166MHz FSB. Unfortunately, we were only able to hit 153MHz FSB on 1.85V (the max attainable Vcore via BIOS) using a Foxconn heatsink (thermal pad). Knowing this particular cooling setup wasn't all that stellar, we decided to go with a Volcano 7+ with some ASIII thermal compound instead. Using the same Vcore as before, we barely inched up any, hitting just 156MHz FSB.

The purpose of using an unlocked CPU for motherboard reviews is that we can very accurately test the FSB limitation of the motherboard itself, thereby isolating the board instead of the processor or some other piece of hardware. This reason alone is enough to convince us to conduct all our Athlon XP overclocking tests with an unlocked CPU.

 

[ChemMan]

I thought that I heard somewhere that via confirmed that the kt400 does not support the \6 divider.

 

[First]

Sorry it wasn't made clear in the article, but the 1/6 PCI divider did indeed not work. I have no idea why Soyo even bothered with this feature; your guess is as good as mine.

Btw, my unlocked 2000+ results were a bit messed up (possibly the processor itself). I think I'm just going to purchase a bunch of 1600+, 1700+, and 1800+ processors, unlock them, and crank up the FSB. That should be more reliable.

Marlin1975, latency becomes an increasingly daunting issue when you're locking the AGP/PCI buses while your FSB is being increased. It's hard to say really who is more responsible for validating an AGP/PCI lock, motherboard makers or chipset makers. Supposedly, nForce2 is going to support such a feature, meaning every nForce2 motherboard *should* have this feature.

 

[o1die]

I tried the p4 dragon ultra briefly, and noticed that a bios upgrade removed the agp/pci lock. Maybe they don't work as well as people think.

 

[dajo]

Interesting. Good review, but...

What's the point of the KT400 chipset if a 1/6 PCI divider does not work? I have been waiting for word of a KT400 board that will run the FSB stable at 200 but haven't seen it yet. More indication that the KT400 will be like the KT266 in that it will be replaced (hopefully) by a KT400a chipset with vast improvements.

My MSI KT3 Ultra is rock solid at 185FSB so why bother "down-grading" to 156MHz???

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: dajo
Interesting. Good review, but...

What's the point of the KT400 chipset if a 1/6 PCI divider does not work? I have been waiting for word of a KT400 board that will run the FSB stable at 200 but haven't seen it yet. More indication that the KT400 will be like the KT266 in that it will be replaced (hopefully) by a KT400a chipset with vast improvements.

My MSI KT3 Ultra is rock solid at 185FSB so why bother "down-grading" to 156MHz???

I agree. The only advantage tot he KT400 IMO is AGP 8X which is more of a selling point than a performance feature. Too bad you got the KT3 Ultra...the Epox 8K5A2+ hits the 230mhz FSB range...