This is important because it is necessary for the PCI bus to be kept at a low frequency in order to avoid Hard drive Corruption when operating the FSB at high speeds, 400MHz DDR FSB for example. Motherboards without the PCI LOCK are not recommendable for future upgrades to 400MHz DDR FSB Barton processors. The motherboards which don't lock the PCI bus at 33MHz would have to implement a 1/6 divider in order to support future 400MHz DDR FSB Barton processors.
Nforce2 motherbard "PCI LOCK" Assurity Table
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Asus A7N8X: Yes
Epox 8RDA+: No (max diviser is 1/5)
MSI K7N2-L: No
Chaintech 7NJS: Yes
Leadtek K7NCR18D: No
Abit NF7-S: Yes
Anandtech asks about PCI Lock on Leadtek K7NCR18D:
"Leadtek has finally gotten back to us and, according to them, their K7NCR18D does not include a PCI bus lock at 33MHz, and therefore the PCI bus will be overclocked at certain overclocked FSB speeds."
Anandtech asks about PCI Lock on MSI K7N2-L:
"MSI sends word that the K7N2-L indeed does not have a PCI bus lock at 33MHz, meaning you will overclock your PCI bus to a certain level at a certain overclocked FSB speed."
<i>It's your world kid!!!</i><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by halkebul on 12/12/02 09:48 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
<i><b>Epox 8RDA+</b> I have a couple copies of emails sent to me from Epox technical support saying that the board 1) doesn't have a PCI lock and 2) has a maximum PCI divisor of /5. So that's the big secret. </i>
