Upgrading old system

[Rich]

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Hi

Just looking into upgrading an old machine that I've not used for a
while into a TIVO system. Its currently a P2 266 microstar 6117
motherboard.

I'm just awaiting a new motherboard battery and P3 533 chip that I
brought from ebay to be delievered.

I've not managed to find any information whether the board will
support a P3 chip on google. Theres a few hits about P3 chips
working but nothing for sure.

If I plugged in the P3 chip and the motherboard didn't support it
what would happen? Would it blow up or just not work?

The manual is quite old and only mentions a max of P2 333 at 75 Mzh,
the P3 is a 100 Mhz one.

Thanks.

Rich

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Skype "richdotward"

 

[Pen]

If the P3 works it will only run at a max of 400MHz
with the 75 MHz buss setting, the max the board supports.
I'll leave the damage question to others.

 

[YanquiDawg]

Well, I wouldn't count on the upgrade working. The 533 runs on a 133 front bus.
P2's were 66. It's very doubtful you can upgrade ths board.

 

[kony]

Hi

Just looking into upgrading an old machine that I've not used for a
while into a TIVO system. Its currently a P2 266 microstar 6117
motherboard.

Intel LX chipset?

I'm just awaiting a new motherboard battery and P3 533 chip that I
brought from ebay to be delievered.

Why buy a CPU before you know if supported?

I've not managed to find any information whether the board will
support a P3 chip on google. Theres a few hits about P3 chips
working but nothing for sure.

Best bet is first upgrading the bios, with the old CPU
installed.

If I plugged in the P3 chip and the motherboard didn't support it
what would happen? Would it blow up or just not work?

Generally speaking (not having had that board), it would run
at the default multiplier (Intel P3 is multiplier locked),
4X, and the FSB the chipset supports, 66MHz.

4 x 66 = 267 (MHz).

Although, this is assuming a (Katmai?) P3, not a Coppermine.
Coppermines aren't supported at all on that board except
with an expensive adapter and then only in limited
scenarios, for example you couldn't run WinNT/2K/XP, only
Win9x (unsure about other OS), and it might have AGP-related
problems... don't recall the exact nature of the problems
but in the past some reported relief from disabling the AGP
aperture (and/or setting to minimal value possible in BIOS).

The best upgrade for an LX board is a Celeron 533 on a
slotket adapter. Due to it's on-core L2 cache a Celeron 533
isn't even much slower than a P3 533 in most uses.

The manual is quite old and only mentions a max of P2 333 at 75 Mzh,
the P3 is a 100 Mhz one.

Actually they shouldn't have listed 75MHz FSB as a supported
option, as it is definitely out of spec and potentially
problematic on LX chipset. It's "possible" you could
disable UATA and use PIO mode for the drives and then have
enough stability with 75MHz FSB, but the tradeoff,
performance hit would typically be worse than the clock
speed gain.

The board should support a P2-333 on 66Mhz FSB. If you
plugged in one and the bios didn't unnecessarily halt then
due to the 333's multiplier it would run at correct speed on
66Mhz FSB, not 75MHz MHz which would overclock it... perhaps
too much too, there wasn't a lot of o'c headroom on the
early-generation P2 Katmai beyond 333MHz... The later p3
w/100MHz FSB o'c better, maybe past 450MHz IIRC, though
again they had a fixed multiplier and wouldn't run at
correct speed on an LX board.

The P3 533 only used 133MHz FSB. P3 500 would be a 100MHz
FSB chip.

Any/all of those had poor performance relative to their
heat output, and lacked SSE support (with possibly exception
of the P3), making a next-generation motherboard supportive
of at least 100MHz FSB and Coppermine CPUs, a much better
choice.

 

[DaveW]

The P3 will NOT work in that board.

 

[Rich]

The P3 will NOT work in that board.

Thanks for everyones comments. Still not got the chip yet with the
delays in the post. Not suprised that it will most likely not work
but I do have another system that I'll use it in instead. This one
seems a more likely to work.

MS-6147
l Slot 1 for Intel® Pentium® II/CeleronTM processor.
l Supports 233MHz, 266MHz, 300MHz, 333MHz, 350MHz, 400MHz,
450MHz, and faster.
l Intel® 82443BX/PIIX4E chipset.
l 66/68/75/83/100/112/133MHz clocks are supported.

Thanks.

Rich

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Skype "richdotward"