PCI Bus and IDE Controller Cards

clevelandtexas · Post by **clevelandtexas** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 1:26 pm

There are PCI IDE controller cards made by Promise, SIIG and others in which can add additional hard drives, CD's and the like or use these cards to bypass the builtin IDE controllers altogther.

Under normal circumstances the IDE bus runs at 33Mhz. On an overclocked computer this speed can be up to 41Mhz. Does anyone have any firsthand knowledge about the effects of varying PCI bus speeds on these controller cards? I've been running a Promise controller on PCI bus at 36Mhz for six months with no ill effects to my attached hard drives. Ill effects, meaning system crashes or corrupted hard drives have not come my way. This has been under both Win98se and WinXP.

Is there something inherit in the design of these controller cards that moderate the higher bus speeds when it comes to disk I/O or have I been lucky? My PCI video, LAN and sound cards are running at this speed with no problems. They've been running at 36Mhz for over two years.

How about higher PCI bus speeds, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41? What are the real limitations and / or consequences?

downhill · Post by **downhill** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 1:56 pm

I would be taking a guess that it's no different for IDE cards than anyother PCI bus cards. Either they work or fail on higher bus speeds.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 1:59 pm

PCI controller cards can be an anchor to a system when it comes to overclocking, especially RAID cards. Success in overclocking depends on many variables, such as your mobo hardware (chipset), and other devices you have on your system. Prediction of who can overclock their IDE controller card is impossible, as to the mixture of hardware out there. Some can, some can't. I can only overclock about 15 mHz above default with my Promise RAID card. But the gain I get in RAID 0 far outweighs my loss of another couple of mHz of overclocking...it's well worth it for me.

clevelandtexas · Post by **clevelandtexas** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 3:00 pm

I have a SY-6BA-IV (440BX chipset) with a PIII 600Mhz processor and 3 x 128 mb Sdram. I've been steadily speeding it up. I'm currently running it at 113x6 = 678Mhz, PCI = 37Mhz. I would like to try 117x6 = 702Mhz, PCI = 39 Mhz.

el bob · Post by **el bob** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 3:32 pm

My SIIG ULTRA ATA/66 PCI IDE Controller card is running at 35Mhz (140/4) without any problems

clevelandtexas · Post by **clevelandtexas** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 4:42 pm

Anyone running PCI bus at 38Mhz or 39Mhz?

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Mon Jun 24, 2002 4:52 pm

I've got a GBT GA-6VXC7-4X-P with a 1.0 Celeron and I can crank it up to 1.2 (120fsb) and my PCI bus at 40. It runs fine. I have a D-link network card and a cheap Yamaha Sound card and they take the 40mhz pci bus just fine