"Steven said:
Hi,
A friend of mine has to replace his socket 478 processor (pins are broken,
don't ask!). Readings on the processor are 2A GHZ/512/400/1.5V. See also
http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5YR.html, that's exactly the same
processor.
The smallest (in speed that is) socket 478 processor I can still buy are
Celerons, like this one:
INTEL CELERON D 310 2.13G SKT478 FSB533 256KB CACHE BOXED.
Will this processor work with his mobo? Will this processor "downgrade" to
FSB 400?
Steven
- - -
There are pinout differences between the Celeron D and the
previous generation of S478 processors. If the motherboard
in question was designed close to the time of the Prescott
processor's release, the manufacturer would say "Prescott
Ready" on the packaging or on the web site. Part of being
Prescott ready, would be accounting for the pinout difference.
A good motherboard manufacturer will keep an up-to-date
list of compatible processors for a motherboard. They generally
tend not to put the name of the processor, so they might not
say "Prescott" or "Northwood". The end-user is supposed to
know intuitively, that a Prescott has a bigger cache than
a Northwood, and a Prescott is 90nm internal geometry
while the Northwood is 0.13 micron. Thus, even if you do
find the list of processors, you could have a bit of
trouble translating the list to something you can buy.
It will be a bit harder to find 0.13u processors, as production
stopped some time ago. There are companies that keep a
stockpile of them, but the price will match the risk of
stockpiling them. One such company is Powerleap.
http://www.powerleap.com/Processors.jsp
You can also look on some of the other pricing engines,
to find left over stock.
The high volume Internet retailers will tend to have
the newer 90nm and 65nm parts. And highly desirable
models tend to disappear first, before the rest. For example,
all the people with motherboards limited to FSB533, would
have bought up the 3.06Ghz processor with HT, as it was
the fastest processor for the socket. Similarly, the
2.8Ghz/FSB400/512KB cache processors would have been
bought up by people limited to FSB400. But if you are
looking for something just to fill the socket, there
should still be a few Northwood or Celeron 0.13u around.
You have to turn over rocks, and look underneath...
Paul
)