NForce3-250 SATA lock?

[Jimmers]

Does anyone know if the SATA bus speed is tied to the FSB on nForce3-250 chipsets? I'm hitting a wall with my 3100 Sempron, regardless of the RAM:FSB divisor. I looked around and this article says that the VIA K8T800 chipsets do not have a SATA lock, and I was wondering of nvidia did the same with their nForce.

 

[hoom]

My understanding is that only SATA 3 & 4 are locked.
Why only 3 & 4?
Buggered if I know :?
Better than no locks at all though

 

[Jimmers]

Unfortunately, I only have 2 SATA connectors (0,1). Well crap. look like I might have to throw in the old IDE HD. And I was really getting used to the SATA drive.

 

[mkillio]

what is a lock? What does it do and does the Asus P4C800-E delux have it?

 

[Jimmers]

what is a lock? What does it do and does the Asus P4C800-E delux have it?

Yes, the asus board you have uses the i875 chipset, which locks the SATA frequency independent of the FSB speed. This allows you a better overclock, since most HDD's won't operate too far out of spec. It's essentially the same idea of locking the PCI/AGP buses, it allows all other components to run at their normal frequencies while running the CPU/RAM out of spec (OC'd).