Question regarding old Gateway Pentium 3 machine

SirLemonhead

I've got a Gateway Pentium 3 450mhz machine here. It's a slot processor.

Does anyone know how upgradable gateway machines were? is it likely that it'd support the fastest P3 slot chip (lol I think it goes to 1 ghz) or will the lower bus speed not allow it to operate at this speed?

It's a second pc I might use for a server of some sort, or for leaving on overnight as my main pc is too noisy. Just considering a cheap speed upgrade at the moment.

I feel like a n00b asking, but my knowledge of pc hardware has gone in the recent years

RicardoSmith

MasterOfSolos wrote:

I've got a Gateway Pentium 3 450mhz machine here. It's a slot processor.

Does anyone know how upgradable gateway machines were? is it likely that it'd support the fastest P3 slot chip (lol I think it goes to 1 ghz) or will the lower bus speed not allow it to operate at this speed?

It's a second pc I might use for a server of some sort, or for leaving on overnight as my main pc is too noisy. Just considering a cheap speed upgrade at the moment.

I feel like a n00b asking, but my knowledge of pc hardware has gone in the recent years

Its likely that any 66 or 100fsb CPU will work in there. Available up to 1Ghz Either Slot 1 or 370 with a slocket. (Slot1 to 370 adapter) They are hard to find though. Powerleap used to sell them. You might need to update the bios for it to see a faster CPU.

SirLemonhead

RicardoSmith wrote:

Its likely that any 66 or 100fsb CPU will work in there. Available up to 1Ghz Either Slot 1 or 370 with a slocket. (Slot1 to 370 adapter) They are hard to find though. Powerleap used to sell them. You might need to update the bios for it to see a faster CPU.

Actually, now that you mention it, I think I have one of those socket to slot cpu converters somewhere it's only got a 500mhz celeron in there though, so i'd still have to get a processor.

So the pc could take up to a 1 gig slot or socket then? Do you mean i'd need to find a 100fsb 1 gig processor? I've been looking on ebay and the 1 gig chips seem to be 133fsb..

Forgot about the BIOS thing. It's unlikely i'd find an update for it now

Thanks for the help.

RicardoSmith

Without the correct bios it won't work.

100fsb is your limit. Theres some celerons 1GB+ that are 100fsb

http://www.powerleap.com/SlotWonder.html

Not sure if these needs the bios update or not. But it comes down to what you can find. If you do find something can I have your 450?

SirLemonhead

Sure.

I guess i'll go look for a bios update, or try figure out what this machine will support without one.

thanks

Megatron

RicardoSmith wrote:

Its likely that any 66 or 100fsb CPU will work in there. Available up to 1Ghz Either Slot 1 or 370 with a slocket. (Slot1 to 370 adapter) They are hard to find though. Powerleap used to sell them. You might need to update the bios for it to see a faster CPU.

It all depends on the motherboard. On some of the P3 450 boards u can put in faster proc's. but on others all you'll get is 3 horziontal lines across the screen.

( I worked in gateway for 5 years ;P )

forbairt

I had a gateway 450mhz ... great machine .. never a problem in the world with it ... don't have it anymore .. but I think I investigated upgrading it at somestage and it wasn't really worth it ... think all I could put in was a 600mhz .. maybe if I'd done a bios upgrade it could have gone higher .. hmm...

could be totally wrong ..gave it away as a present so I can no longer check it out ...


maybe try dumping in some more memory for a performance improvement ? originally it had 256 I dumped in another 256 and it made a huge difference on what I was doing with it ..

Dr Bolouswki

a google on the part number or name of the motherboard (gatewy used to name their boards like fedora, alamo, that sort of thing) might yield you some results

SirLemonhead

Thanks for the help everyone. I can't remember how much ram it has to be honest, i'll power it up sometime tonight and get some details.

Something like Sisoft Sandra might dig up some useful information