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Date:      Mon, 21 Sep 1998 16:46:29 -0400
From:      "Steve Friedrich" <SteveFriedrich@Hot-Shot.com>
To:        "Mike Smith" <mike@word.smith.net.au>
Cc:        "hardware@FreeBSD.ORG" <hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Joe Gleason" <clash@tasam.com>, "spork" <spork@super-g.com>
Subject:   Re: SCSI card used at cdrom.com?
Message-ID:  <199809212046.QAA17455@laker.net>

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On Mon, 21 Sep 1998 09:48:37 -0700, Mike Smith wrote:

>> On Sun, 20 Sep 1998 23:16:54 -0700, Mike Smith wrote:
>> 
>> >> Wont the PCI bus still run at it's 33mhz regardless of what the system bus
>> >> is and therefor the system bus speed would have no effect on PCI devices?
>> >
>> >Generally correct, yes.
>> 
>> Actually, the correct answer is NO.  With the exception of some newer
>> motherboards, the PCI clock is derived from the system bus speed.  Some
>> newer moboards de-couple the PCI clock from the system bus.  One place
>> to do a little reading is http://www.tomshardware.com/
>
>This place is Overclocker Heaven.  If you configure your board 
>correctly, you won't exceed the 33MHz PCI clock limit, and this 
>includes running 100MHz slot 1 processors.
>
I think you missed my real point though.  I was trying to tell everyone
that on most older moboards, the system bus speed determines the PCI
bus speed.  So if you have a 60MHz bus speed, you have a 30MHz PCI
speed.  And a 66MHz bus speed gives you a 33MHz PCI bus.  This doesn't
pose a problem for correctly designed PCI boards.  But some newer
moboards allow higher bus speeds, like 87, etc., that will yield PCI
bus speeds in excess of the spec, causing problems with some PCI
boards.  These newer moboards were "caused" by overclockers, but it is
quite common to support bus speeds higher than 66, and if that moboard
doesn't have separate jumpers for the "front side bus", you will have a
PCI bus overspec if you use a bus speed higher than 66.

So it really affects us all, thanks to the overclockers.  I'm an old
hardware guy and I do not condone overclocking.  It's really only
worthwhile to someone willing to sacrifice system stability for
performance.  That pretty much restricts it to people playing games, or
experimenting.  It's definitely not for production machines.

>> You'll want to research Front Side Bus.
>
>Thanks, I know more than I need or want to know about this already.



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