Processor Upgrade help!

byte

Hi, I have a PIII 550Mhz processor and would like to upgrade it very soon. Problem is I don't want to change my motherboard and the processor is a SLOT 1 type. What is the best I can expect to get? Also, settings have to be changed in BIOS as there are no jumpers to switch. I assume this is OK.

TIA

astrofool

depends on the motherboard, and if it has a bios upgrade to support newer chips. You will at least need a slotket adaptor for it that supports coppermine chips, slot processors are very hard to come by nowadays and would usually be priced quite high, i'm guessing a 900mhz celeron II would probably work, but their performance ain't huge, other option is if whether you can get slotkets that support the Tualatin processors just out, I don't think they're a reality at all though, leaving you with the option of celeron 900, and then if your board supports a 133mhz bus, the pentium III 1ghz. Or you could try overclocking a BX motherboard, depends on your agp card and number of pci devices, and quality of motherboard to do that.

Find out the make of motherboard would be the first step (manufacturer and model number)

marauder

The first question is how much do you want to spend?

The Slot 1 is not a problem as you can get a SLOT to Socket adaptor that will allow you to use the FCPGA chips
(see here)

Actually I think you can get up to 1.0GHz PIII with slot 1, although getting your hands on one may not be as easy as a FCPGA version.

There was no 550 MHz version with 133Mhz FSB so I assume you have PC100 RAM and your motherboard supports only 100MHz. in that case you need to get a 100MHz FSB processor which you can get in up to 1GHz

The big question is your motherboard. What processor speed does it support? Also what voltage does it support? The 550 used 2.0V while the 550E used 1.65-1.7V

Check out the upgrading website for more detail than you will ever need
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/pentiumiii/tti002.htm

marauder

Try this....
http://www.pricewatch.co.uk/