P4T-E Processor Upgrade

[Great Dane]

I am a little slow in upgrading my almost 2 year old P4T-E 2.0 Ghz.
It has been rock solid and was decently fast. Now my gaming son is
thristy for more power.

I have read older posts and understand the differences in the ICS/CYP
clock generators. Unfortunately I have the Cypress chips. I
understand I can go with a 533 buss speed P4 using the 3X setting in
the bios to run the PC800 memory at native 400 speeds. This works by
using dip settings from the older P4T. I am thinking of going with
the 2.8 Ghz 533 CPU. I am just curious to hear from other P4T-E
upgraders. Anyone out there using 533 buss P4's in a P4T-E with the
Cypress chips? Which P4 did you go with, what settings did you use
(dip switch/bios) and are you happy with the results?

 

[Henry]

I am a little slow in upgrading my almost 2 year old P4T-E 2.0 Ghz.
It has been rock solid and was decently fast. Now my gaming son is
thristy for more power.

I have read older posts and understand the differences in the ICS/CYP
clock generators. Unfortunately I have the Cypress chips. I
understand I can go with a 533 buss speed P4 using the 3X setting in
the bios to run the PC800 memory at native 400 speeds. This works by
using dip settings from the older P4T. I am thinking of going with
the 2.8 Ghz 533 CPU. I am just curious to hear from other P4T-E
upgraders. Anyone out there using 533 buss P4's in a P4T-E with the
Cypress chips? Which P4 did you go with, what settings did you use
(dip switch/bios) and are you happy with the results?

You can go with a 533 cpu but generally, you will not be able to overclock
the unit 33 percent no matter what you do with the memory (if you have the
CYP chips. I could not get more that 18 percent OC out of my system no
matter what I tried. In my system, a 2.8 Ghz, 533 CPU, overclocked by 18
percent would only reach about 2.5 Ghz. What I did is purchase the fastest
400 Mhz FSB CPU that I could, which is a 2.6 Mhz, 400 FSB. This way, you
don't have to overclock anything, and if I want to, I can overclock the 2.6
by 18 percent and get about 3 Ghz out of it.

Good luck,

Henry

 

[Barry Watzman]

It's possible but not guaranteed. You need to get a copy of the old
(early) P4T manual, it had dip switch settings documented that were
deleted from the later P4T and P4T-E manuals (the actual switch settings
for all of these boards are the same). There were two settings for
running at 533/133, but I'm told that only one of them works, at most
(the 850 chipset isn't guaranteed to run at 533 at all, but most seem to
do so).

Really, a better solution is just to replace the motherboard. If you
want to keep your RDRAM, you can sell your P4T-E and get a P4T533-C and
the net outlay will probably be $50 or less (for reasons that I have not
figured out, used P4T-E's are going for unusually high prices right now,
one guy has one on E-Bay for $89 and he's actually got a bid on it. You
can buy a P4T533-C for LESS than that).

Of course, you have the option, also, of essentially starting over from
scratch, new MB, memory and CPU. Personally, I'm fond of the P4T533's
(that use 32-bit RDRAM) for some of their features.

 

[Great Dane]

I really was planning on extending the useful life of the P4T-E a
little longer by upgrading the CPU as far as I could. Barry, I read a
couple of posts of yours from a year ago or so that sounded confident
that the P4T-E would run a 533 buss CPU with ease even with the
Cypress chip. I found the older P4T 133 dip settings. I wanted to
hear some follow-up to see how this turned out. Sounds like not that
great if you went to a P4T533. My thinking was to upgrade the P4T-E
now, get a little more use out of it as the main family PC. Then in
about 6 months build a new system using the latest MB technology at
the time and pass the P4T-E on to my daughter for use at college. I
will re-think this to the fastest 400 buss CPU unless I hear further
input.

 

[Great Dane]

I really was planning on extending the useful life of the P4T-E a
little longer by upgrading the CPU as far as I could. Barry, I read a
couple of posts of yours from a year ago or so that sounded confident
that the P4T-E would run a 533 buss CPU with ease even with the
Cypress chip. I found the older P4T 133 dip settings. I wanted to
hear some follow-up to see how this turned out. Sounds like not that
great if you went to a P4T533. My thinking was to upgrade the P4T-E
now, get a little more use out of it as the main family PC. Then in
about 6 months build a new system using the latest MB technology at
the time and pass the P4T-E on to my daughter for use at college. I
will re-think this to the fastest 400 buss CPU unless I hear further
input.