Spread Spectrum and....?

RWBRWB Icrontian
edited May 2004 in Science & Tech
What is "Spread Spectrum" and "Unused PCI Clock"? Should I have them set to Enabled or Disabled?

Comments

  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Anyone?
  • rykoryko new york
    edited May 2004
    I am not 100% sure about spread spectrum, but i believe it is a 'performance enhancing' mode of some sort. Somebody else might have an exact definition. I do know that i had an old soyo board that had spread spectrum, but if i enabled it the pc wouldn't boot. I think this is because i had slow crappy RAM. So if you have fast, good RAM, then give it a try and see if it makes any differences in benches like sandra or pcmark04.

    As for the lock unused pci thing, it should absolutely be enabled. It turns off empty pci slots. So unless all of your pci slots are occupied, go for it. I don't think it will help performance, but it will lessen the stress on your psu.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    ryko wrote:
    I am not 100% sure about spread spectrum, but i believe it is a 'performance enhancing' mode of some sort. Somebody else might have an exact definition. I do know that i had an old soyo board that had spread spectrum, but if i enabled it the pc wouldn't boot. I think this is because i had slow crappy RAM. So if you have fast, good RAM, then give it a try and see if it makes any differences in benches like sandra or pcmark04.

    As for the lock unused pci thing, it should absolutely be enabled. It turns off empty pci slots. So unless all of your pci slots are occupied, go for it. I don't think it will help performance, but it will lessen the stress on your psu.


    Yous ure about the pCI thing? I know that's what it sounds like, but BIOS names are so weird, the way it sounds, isn't usually the thing it means :P
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Ryko is essentially right about locking. Spread spectrrum lets the bus speeds float a bit. My soyo board was most stable at verty tiny spreads, but I had faster RAM than most had on that board when I used that feature.

    What actually happens with the locking is not that the slots are totally off\disabled, but that the slots are locked for bus speed and therefore not polled as often as spread spectrum might allow for-- BIOS can and does detect device presence at boot, the unused slots essentially are just polled for presence while BIOS actively works with the slots with cards in them. USED slots can float if spread spectrum is on.

    John D.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited May 2004
    I always turn spread spectrum off. Like John said, it lets the bus speed float a little and is supposed to cut down on RF interference. It also will make your computer a little less stable, not good if you are overclocking the hell out of it.
  • madmatmadmat
    edited May 2004
    Spread spectrum is supposed to reduce any stray RF transmissions your pc could make due to overclocking, I have never seen it make the slightest bit of difference in performance nor stability on any of the pc's I had that offered it, that said I do run it because I have a 2.4ghz cordless phone and from what I'm given to understand those are the things it can interfere with in a poorly shielded pc (I kinda consider a window to lower the quality of shielding myself) so I run it just so I can avoid any fuzz it may cause although I haven't tested to see if it does in fact do anything.
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