What's the point of unlocked SATA ports?

Astral Abyss

Astral Abyss

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 15, 2004
Messages
3,067
Here's the problem:

Why do motherboard makers put additional unlocked SATA ports on their boards and then market them to the overclocker community?

Take for instance my board, the Epox 9NDA3+. It has 4 SATA ports on it. 2 true native, and the other 2 native, but through the Marvell PHY. All are accessible through the BIOS. Unfortuantely, only the 2 true native ports are locked (from all that I've gathered searching the web). The Marvell ports are not, and of course these are the ones in the best location.

So, any of us who buy this board to overclock (and why not, the Winchesters are begging to be overclocked) are pretty much stuck using only 2 of the SATA ports, and like on the MSI Neo2 Platinum, they're the 2 located in the worst spots, either directly above or directly below the AGP slot.

Who was the genius that came up with those locations?

I'd really like to get myself one of those new Plextor SATA DVD burners, but it looks like I'm forced to choose between SATA and stock speed or IDE and overclocked. I think we all know that overclocked is going to win that battle, but why should we have to choose? Ya know?
 
I agree, it's a pretty dumb idea on someone's part to not lock all 4 ports. I already have 2 DVD drives (one reader, one burner) that are both IDE, so I'm good, but yes it would be much more nerd-sexy to have 4x sata drives...plus my XP-120 hangs over the IDE plugs so there's no moving those around without removing the monster. Hopefully sometime soon this will get fixed....they need to just lock everything with a bios option, except the memory and the CPU. It couldn't be that hard to do. Then all you have to do is 'lock system bus for overclocking' then all that overclocks is the HTT (system wide, relative to the FSB), the FSB (also called HTT, but it's easier to say FSB :p), and the memory. Or maybe they don't know how yet?
 
:D Thx for the help. I had no idea about the sata ports. I couldn't OC past 235. Now that I changed them (and I changed the AGP bus to 67, heard that may lock it, not sure if that did anything) I am at 255 and climbing.

NEO2
Corsair twinx 1024 3200LLPT
Winchester 3000+
2 74 gig raptors (no raid)
120 ide Western digital
AIW9800
audigy 2 zs
:cool:
 
they target the boards for the enthusiast, which doesn't necessarily mean overclocker. I never understood how people can use so much HD space to warrant more than 2, but thats just me
 
they target the boards for the enthusiast, which doesn't necessarily mean overclocker. I never understood how people can use so much HD space to warrant more than 2, but thats just me
Click to expand...

1 WD 74GB Raptor
1 Maxtor 300GB data drive

1 SATA Plextor 16x DVD Burner?

I realize SATA DVD-RW drives are pretty rare, but aren't us "enthusiasts" supposed to be forward thinkers?

I still don't understand how they can lock the PCI/AGP bus, lock the IDE controller, lock the NIC, lock the Firewire, lock the USB, lock the audio, lock the 2 native SATA ports, but they can't lock the additional SATA ports?

I got tired of pondering it and just bought the IDE Plextor. I can always buy an SATA-to-IDE adapter in the future if I want to keep everything uniform. See, my reasoning for wanting SATA was if I keep this burner 2 or 3 years it'll last through my next upgrade and I didn't want to be stuck having to worry about IDE at all when I buy my next mobo.
 
Well I think I may have taken it where I can thanks to this tip. I have it at:

FSB 300
mem 250 (5:4 ratio)
Cpu 1.55 + 10% (reads at 1.63V)
mem @ 2.65
mult 9
That's: 2700MHz from 1800 MHz

Neo2 plat
3000+ winchester
AIW9800
audigy zs
XP-120
on XP pro

running a bunch of UT2K4 tests now w/ a high temp of 48C. I'll have to get the Pi calculator, I hear it stresses the system good and is a great test for stability.

Thx again.
 
Yeahm get SuperPI and do the 32m test...if it doesn't crash you're probably alright.
 
Argis said:
Well I think I may have taken it where I can thanks to this tip. I have it at:

FSB 300
mem 250 (5:4 ratio)
Cpu 1.55 + 10% (reads at 1.63V)
mem @ 2.65
mult 9
That's: 2700MHz from 1800 MHz

Neo2 plat
3000+ winchester
AIW9800
audigy zs
XP-120
on XP pro

running a bunch of UT2K4 tests now w/ a high temp of 48C. I'll have to get the Pi calculator, I hear it stresses the system good and is a great test for stability.

Thx again.
Click to expand...


Mem @ 250? I swear my bios only reads 100, 166, 200, and auto. :confused:
 
Did the superPi test and it didn't run. Dropped down to 290 and it runs great. Maybe w/ some tweaks I can get more. I had the cpu voltage at 1.55 + 10% and it only read 1.63 or so. Maybe my psu needs some help. I have the fan turned down.

Oh I did somewhere over 29 minutes on the 32K superpi @ 290 (166 divider).
 
To make overclocking as big a pain in the ass as it can be. Helps people kill their hdd's too and forces them to go out and buy another thereby helping the industry :rolleyes:

Or to see how stupid we are and if we can identify the problem? :D

My guess is because most people only use 2 and as long as that works, they couldn't care less about any other small minorities there :(
 
One other thing to consider in this situation is adding a PCI SATA card, which would be locked.

BTW, I have the same board (just built it), and I'm currently doing torture testing @260FSB (2340MHz). For some reason, the 2/3 mem divider won't work above 245FSB, so I am currently running my PC3200 RAM above spec...not sure how much further it will go, but it seems counter productive to drop all the way to 130MHz RAM to get a little bit more out of the CPU. If anyone has experience on this issue, let me know!
 
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