Need software to read PCI-E + PCI Bus Speed!

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sohosources

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Oct 7, 2006
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Hi, gang:

Overclocking an E6300 on a Gigabyte 945G chipset mobo (GA-945GCM-S2C). It's a backup PC and a Hackintosh experiment box.

I can pass MEMTEST and boot into/run XP at bus speeds up to 350 MHz (from 266 stock for the E6300). Running Orthos now...

Problem is, there's some scuttlebut about this board not adequately locking the PCI-E bus, and I don't want to risk corrupting my hard drives, etc.

I need software that will read out / test / display these bus freqs...and I can't find ANYTHING that will do it... I've tried Sandra, Everest, SetFSB, Clockgen, and CPU-Z. They read the other busses just fine...but not PCI-E or PCI...

Will anything actually test these bus speeds?

Thanks,

--KK in MN
 
yeah, I was going to say ClockGen, but I haven't used it in a while to know how newer boards are supported.
 
Clockgen -- w/out specifying the PLL -- reads the first three busses, but not the last two.

I have been trying to find the PLL for my mobo, the GA-945GCM-S2C, to no avail. One number that might have some connection is "82801GB." The other is IT8218, but I think that's an I/O controller.

Anyone know -- or know hot to find -- the PLL designator for the little Gigabyte board?

Clockgen's website says that "Clockgen will be back soon," and all support pages and info seem to be unavailable.

This combo seems to OC nicely, but I don 't want to OC my SATA controllers and my vid card, etc. I've been speed testing with an old IDE drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

--KK in MN
 
PCI-E is 100 mhz I thought by default? I've read tweaking that causes serious stability issues.
 
Okay. I found the GA-945GCM-S2C's PLL. It's an ICS 9LPRS587EGLF.Clockgen has something similar listed, but it won't read the clocks. SetFSB, however, has the exact PLL listed, and works!

This mobo always locks the PCI bus to 33.3 no matter what. That's apparently not an issue. The PCI-E bus, however, does not lock per se, but scales upward somewhat depending on the degree of overclocking. At 266 MHz, for example, the default FSB of my Conroe E6300 (266 X 7), leaving the PCI-E bus speed set to AUTO produces a PCI-E bus speed of the required 100 MHz. (NOTE: When OCing, setting the PCI-E speed to anything other than AUTO causes the bios to reset -- a "protective" measure by design.)

When OCing the FSB, however, the AUTO setting produces a "scaled up" frequency, as follows:

306 MHz FSB = 104 MHz PCI-E
320 MHz FSB = 110 MHz PCI-E
333 MHz FSB = 114 MHz PCI-E
350 MHz FSB = 122 MHz PCI-E Yikes!

This is unfortunate, because my E6300 seems to be quite a clocker... At 350 MHz FSB the CPU is running fine at nearly 2.5 GHz -- way above the 1.86-GHz rated spec. Even with the 122-MHz PCI-E bus (no SATA devices connected...all IDE), Orthos ran fine for a half hour until I stopped it myself. Not a golden stamp of OC approval, but very promising for the CPU. (it ran cool as a cucumber, too, thanks to a BIG HSF).

How much can I safely OC the PCI-E bus without risking hard drive data corruption, etc? 104 MHz? 105 MHz? That's just 4% and 5% respectively, which SEEMS to be reasonable :)

I wonder if I can "pin mod" the proc to select 1333-MHz as default? I'm sure this particular CPU would run just fine, cuz it's already run at 1400 MHz for a half hour in Orthos...

Any ideas?

Thanks, as always :)

--KK in MN
 
Can you manually set the PCIe bus speed? I'd set it to 101 or something instead of Auto if you can.

Personally, I wouldn't go above 110mhz if I wanted to not risk data corruption.
 
When OCing the FSB, if I set the PCI-E bus to a specific numeric value, the board won't post and simply resets itself to non-OCed settings. Only AUTO works when OCing, unless I manually set a PCI-E bus speed of between 115 and 120 MHz (which is higher than I'd like to go on that bus). The CPU and the RAM have a lot more headroom, though...

Since my last post I completed a six-hour run of Orthos with no probs. The FSB was at 306 MHz, and the corresponding PCI-E bus was at 104 MHz.

This thing runs just fine at 350/122 MHz, respectively, but since I'm not using any SATA devices right now...and just IDE...I'm worried about data corruption when I switch to SATA drives in the near future.

I wish there was a way to figure out if my SATA controller (and any other device hanging on the PCI-E bus) would work at those elevated speeds w/out fritzing.

--KK in MN
 
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