OCing Help: ECS AMD690GM-M2

[basketcase]

Anyone out there have the ECS AMD690GM-M2 motherboard? I am trying to figure out if this board has PCI/PCI-E locks when overclocking. The board itself isn't made for OCing, but it does allow you to bump the FSB up to 232 (from 200). Which gives my x2 4000+ a nice little bump from 2100 mhz to 2436 mhz. And with this bump, it brings the ram up to its rated spec around DDR2 800. When at 200 FSB the ram is at DDR700.

My concern is that the PCI/PCI-e bus is not locking at their normal speeds when I do this, and I am afraid it will mess up my hardware. But, I did bump up the FSB to 230 and ran Prime95 for about 3 hours with no errors at all. But, I don't know that Prime95 will bring to light a problem with the PCI/PCI-e bus being to high. There is liitle I can find about this board online, a few reviews, but none that I could find specifially say whether or not these lock. And nothing in the bios appears to control it. I tried things like, Clockgen, Systool and everest to find out what the PCI/PCI-e bus is running at, but none of them can read that.

Ok, one more question about this...

If there happens to be no lock, how high can you push the FSB before it makes the PCI/PCI-e bus too high. I know that it can run a little above spec (PCI=33 mhz and PCI-e=100 mhz), but how fast does it go when you have it at, lets say, 230 FSB?

Thanks again!

 

[Mondoman]

At 230MHz FSB, the other buses would presumably be 15% faster than normal (230/200). Since ECS are low-end products not designed for OCing, I think you are right to be concerned. Why not contact ECS tech support?

 

[basketcase]

I did... they just haven't gotten back to me yet.

So, does anyone know how high you can typically take the PCI-e bus, before it is dangerous? Is 115 mhz too much?

Not a huge deal, I guess. IT is plenty fast for me at stock. I just thought if I could get a free OC, I would.

Thanks!

 

[basketcase]

Incase anyone was wondering... Here is what ECS said about the PCI/PCi-e bus.

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The PCI/PCI-e bus would stay at the normal 100/33 mhz even though you change the FSB for the CPU.
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This is due to the fact that the board auto detects what the speed of the components that are attached to it need to run at.

I guess that means I can do the OC! Which is awesome, because, I get about 400 mhz bump and the ram will run at about 800 mhz (a little higher), instead of the 700 mhz at 200 mhz FSB. Very cool indeed. Obviously, the OC isn't anything amazing, as many boards can go well above a FSB of 232. But, hey why not take advantage of it. And I already know it is stable, I have Prime95'd it for many hours at 232 FSB. I just got afraid when I started thinking about the PCI/PCI-e not locking and frying my 8600 GT or my harddrives.

Thanks all!