Computer CPU upgrade

Jongamer · Post by **Jongamer** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 8:47 am

Ok I have this 500mhz Intel Pentium 3, When looking at the Mother board, I noticed that the CPU was Easily Removable just by pulling a Card out which Had it on it (I know its not the Video card so dont think im stupid) Well Is there any CPUs out there for Retail that I can buy to Upgrade my CPU.

And I have been hearing things like CPU upgrade can only go so far cause of the motherboard.

and if there are not Retail CPU cards, How hard would it be to Remove and Replace the CPU?

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:25 am

well they stopped making pentium 3's about 5 years ago

Within a series of chips, you usually have a few variations, and between series (p2, p3, p4) the chips are completely completely different, despite having similar names.

motherboards support usually one or two variations of only one series of chip.

in your case, you described a SLOT1 chip. the little board you pull out is nothing other than the CPU itself, and some cache. The Pentium 2 used the same system, and they kept it around for a while on the P3, before moving to socket 370 or whatever came next.

my point its that typically SLOT1 P3s cant be found at speeds faster than ~600mhz, because then they stopped making them in that form.

Furthermore, the P3 came around at a time when ram was transitioning from PC100 to PC133, so you can get chips that expect a 100mhz FSB and ones that expect 133mhz. Your ram also has to be rated at the right speed.

Im guessing you have a chip with a 100mhz FSB, due to its similarity to my processor (450mhz SLOT1 P3 'Katmai'). this means your motherboard probably dosent support the faster 'Coppermine' or 'Tualtin P3's' (they use a 133mhz bus), as well youd need to buy all new RAM anyways if you wanted to move to 133Mhz type processor.

One last thing, you CAN buy boards to convert S370 P3s into SLOT1's, but I wouldnt waste my time and money, since I think you already have one of the fastest chips your mobo supports.

in conclusion, you could probably just pick up an old 'Tualtin' P3 or 'Wilamette' P4 computer for dirt cheap anyways, and completely replace the mobo/cpu/ram that you have

project_failure · Post by **project_failure** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 11:18 am

if you need more speed your best bet is to over clock but upgrades are pretty much out of the question. my pentium 2 processor is on a card but
it use pc133 ram.

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:19 pm

There's Socket 370 > Slot 1 boards. I almost bought one to put a Socket 370 1GHz Celeron onto my Slot 1 mobo, but I just bought a new mobo instead...

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:23 pm

Yeah your better off to buy a new motherboard with a cheap Celeron or P4 in it. Shouldn't cost over $100. Maybe free if you know people throwing out some computer parts.

Dr. KillGood · Post by **Dr. KillGood** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:34 pm

I got a old computer with windows 95 and a 65MHz processor in it!

'

Ask here!

http://www.overclock.net/

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:46 pm

Here's one of those cards: link.

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:15 pm

Dr. KillGood wrote:I got a old computer with windows 95 and a 65MHz processor in it! '

Ask here!

http://www.overclock.net/

486? 486DX? Or is it a 386?

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 8:58 pm

386 only went up to 12.5MHz IIRC

and 486 (dx/sx) only went up to 50MHz IIRC.

so id say 486DX2 66MHz (2x33MHz)

man thats slow.

Post by **Triton** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 10:31 pm

i think i have a PC around here somewhere with a 286 in it (want PC-240 lol) and another with a 386dx and one witha 75mhz p1 lol

actually the 386 was clocked between 16 and 40mhz, the 286 is what you are thinking of (6 to 25mhz with most being 12.5 i think)

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 11:12 pm

They're all CRAP compared to the all-mighty <a href="http://mtac.profusehost.net/cp386/cp386.shtml">Compaq Portable 386</a>!!!!

Post by **bicostp** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:02 am

That's almost as old-school as my Zenith TranSport 8088 laptop!

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/pc/h/supsport.jpg
(Big picture, not mine.)

Unfortunately flipping the power switch does nothing.

The power supply's still good though. The bottom half of the screen's screwed up too (it gets weird vertical lines). Oh and when it used to boot up it would simply display "divide overflow" over and over, which suggests a corrupted DOS installation. Oh well.