how do i know what stepping i have?

[toph99]

i have a Pentium III 500E in my Dell. and i can't take off the heatsink to check. does anyone know what the 500E's were?

also, how well are they to overclock? i'm thinking about taking this one out and putting it in the system i'm building, and then putting a celeron 600 in the dell. would the celeron600 overclock better than the PIII 500?

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Probably cA2

 

[Dark4ng3l]

but it wil overclock very easily to 667 550's used to go to 733 easily with the old stepping.

 

[toph99]

what would you recommend me putting in my system(to overclock) the PIII 500, or the Celeron 600 or 633(depending on what i can get my hands on, and if possible, a 566) which would give me the better preformance?

 

[chuonthis]

I think an easy way to check is just by going to the system properties in Windows (WinKey+Pause or through Control Panel)...it tells you in that first screen what your stepping and stuff is...

And when comparing oc'ed CPUs, I usually look at the next stable FSB as a potential oc'ed speed so your 500E would go to about 665 (5x133) and the Celeron 600 would go to about 900 (9x100)...I'm not sure if you'll be able to reach those, but those are approximations.

I'm not sure which one is better though...cuz in some benchmarks, an oc'ed Celeron 850 is about the same as a P3 650...and w/ the 665 going at 133 fsb, it might have an advantage over the 900.

Btw, I'm new to the forum so please comment on my posts =)

 

[Dark4ng3l]

I say get some generic pc-133 ram(if you dont have any right now) and overclock the p3(if your video card can take 89mhz agp bus)

 

[Deslok]

You can try looking here:
Stepping codes