Best way to boost performance of BX chipset.

[timswim78]

I have an old Dell G1. It is a 400Mhz Celeron (the chipset's MAx CPU) with a BX chipset motherboard, and I would like to boost its performace a little. (It doesn't need to be too fast because I am just using the machine to learn linux and folding).So far, the only solution that I have been able to find is a Powerleap adapter that will allow me to plug in a faster CPU.

Has anyone tried a powerleap, and how did it work out?

Are there any other solutions? (I am not afraid of soldering / experimenting).

 

[asm0deus]

I ran WindowsXP on a P2-366, the thing that most notably increased performance was having ~512MB of memory and using a ATA100 PCI IDE adapter with a ATA100 HDD, most on-board IDE's for systems that old use ATA33 and they use system resources to process disk functions. With ATA100 & 133 you should notice all around speed improvements. I've used a powerleap adapter going from 450MHz to 1.3GHz and noticed alot of improvement also but those chips are a pain to find and are usually overpriced! you can usually get a much faster AMD CPU at a similar price point.

 

[Texun]

I'd have to second the ATA100 card and as much memory as you can afford (within reason. I had a PIII-550 in a BX board (ATA33) with 512, and adding the ATA100 card was undoubtedly the best $25 I have ever spent on an upgrade. It smoked for a 550.

*EDIT* Just to be clear, the ATA100 card will only give you a speed bump if you have fairly new drive. If you are still using the drive that it came with then you may want to re-think your options.