Stability of network cards at 75MHz+

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 16 May 2000, Chris Empson wrote:

> > I am going to be involved in purchasing some additional nodes for our 
> > Beowulf, and was wondering if people had any wisdom about the stability of 
> > network cards running at non-standard FSB (and PCI) speeds.  The ability to 
> > overclock the Celeron is well documented, but I haven't seen much on how the 
> > PCI cards are affected.
> > 
> > The hardware is going to be the Abit BP6 boards, and the 3c905B NICs.  No 
> > hard drives, which I hear are the biggest problems...
> 
> I have been running my Abit BP6 mobo @ 75MHz FSB since January with no 
> ill affects to the stability of any component, including my el cheapo PCI 
> NE2000 clone network card. 
> 
> The machine is very stable, but does get a little bit on the warm side 
> now and again! 

A further warning to add to Doug's:  If you have any interest in running
the BP6 nodes with UDMA enabled, you CANNOT overclock.  I believe that
Mark Hahn noted that in a comment just yesterday or the day before.  You
will completely screw up critical timing if you do.

I personally run my BP6's at their nice, pedestrian spec speed and they
are very nice and reliable.

    rgb

> 
> 
> ===========================
> Chris Empson
> Second Year MChem Chemistry 
> University of Hull
> England
> 
> 
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Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu