Pentium upgrade question (P2 350 MHz era)

[Yamyam]

I'd like to upgrade my mother's P2/350 system to a faster CPU. I don't want to upgrade the entire system due to the expense and the potential tech support issues

She's got a Gateway something-or-other with a Pentium2/350 MHz CPU. I can't find any information about this machine on Gateway's site, so I don't know which processors would be compatible. It seems like I should be able to use any slot-1 CPU, but I'd like to find out whether there were any major changes in the architecture that might prevent certain CPU's from working as a drop-in replacement.

So, anyone got any advice for me?

 

[mechBgon]

I have a few GW 350's at work. I'll see if I can scrounge up any further info on them, but my gut feeling is they max out at 450MHz Pentium II.

Let me ask you this: does your mom care? If not, make sure she's got enough RAM and leave well enough alone. My dad has an Emachines with a :QCyrix PR333:Q and hey, it does what he needs (he's a retired railroad foreman, 72 years old, and taught himself to build budget and tax spreadsheets that I could never hope to do... what a guy ).

If mom does want it to be faster, a 7200rpm hard drive and an Ultra100 PCI card will light a fire under that ol' Chrysler more than an extra 100MHz of CPU power would do. Win2000 with 256Mb of RAM will also make it snappier, since Win2000 will cache your apps in RAM after you use them the first time, so they re-open at RAM speed instead of at HDD speed.

 

[Yamyam]

Hi MechBgon, thanks for the info. Win2k would do wonders for that machine, but I'm afraid it would give her problems with her peripherals, and I KNOW she'd ask whether it was a valid license


In any case, I don't want to mess with the OS or the drives right now because I'm only going to be up there for a couple of days and I wouldn't be able to get all her stuff reinstalled, reconfigured, and stable that quickly. I figure the only really quick/easy upgrades are RAM or CPU, and the RAM's plenty good already at 320 Mb. This is as much for my sake as for hers, since I use that machine for web browsing and emailing while I'm visiting. It's AGONIZINGLY slow when I've got more than one or two browsers open.


If the max is 450 MHz, then it kinda becomes a question of "why bother".... I was hoping for 600 MHz or 800 MHz or something.


Oh, and I left a typo on the original post, it's actually a P2/350. I've edited it.

 

[mechBgon]

I'll post after 5PM PST with my findings, if any, on the CPU support. If her system's super-slow, I wonder if it has about 1200Mb of Internet files cached and has gotten all fragmented up? I set the 350's to cache the minimum possible (1Mb) in Internet Exploder properties to prevent this.

Another possiblilty is that you go to start the system up and it sees "hey, d'oh, I was supposed to run a routine scheduled virus scan on the hard drive yesterday, I better do it now! :Q" Nothing bogs our rigs down like having McAfee do a full virus scan on the hard drive... heh. *kisses 15000rpm Ultra160 SCSI hard drive...*

 

[Yamyam]

Heh... I just replaced my 15k Cheetah with a pair of striped JB's. The benchmarks are comparable, but somehow it's just not the same


Good idea on the internet cache. I can probably lock the swapfile size for some incremental improvement, too. Right now everything's running at stock settings. SOMETHING is making it run much slower than it ought to.... I guess I'm looking at a CPU upgrade as an easy way to speed it up without diving too deeply into the troubleshooting.


I don't think that virus scanning is a problem, but she DOES run a bunch of background junk like Felix the Desktop Cat and her Thomas Kincaid screensaver program. It's annoying, but on the other hand, the whole purpose of the computer is so she can set it up like she wants it I just kill Felix and Thom whenever I'm using it, and then reboot when I'm done.

 

[mechBgon]

Aack, I'm with you, I like a lean-and-clean system, none of that background junk for me either

I pulled up the info for one of my GW GP6-350's here, and they say it will take Pentium II's with 66 and 100MHz busses, maxing at 450MHz. I'm not sure if they've got their story straight, since they say it's an NLX-format board when it's really ATX, but that seems realistic for an older 440BX OEM board like that. Good luck on the perking-up of the system, anyway.

 

[Yamyam]

Bleagh. For 450 MHz, it's probably not worth the expense or hassle of switching out the CPU. I guess I'll have to do what I can with the OS/browser tweaks and leave it at that


Thanks for the info!

 

[MadTom]

Put Opera on it. It will browse faster...

 

[Assimilator1]

Mechbgone
Are you sure those mbrds won't take a Katamai PIII? ,these go from 450 - 600MHz & these have a vcore of 2-2.05v.
I don't think bios support would matter

 

[Mardeth]

Well updating the processor and mb is a pretty fail safe way to uprgare but so are many other things. Maybe you should get the fastest processors there is for the current mb plus some ram.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Mechbgone
Are you sure those mbrds won't take a Katamai PIII? ,these go from 450 - 600MHz & these have a vcore of 2-2.05v.
I don't think bios support would matter

It's a possibility I'm trying to remember if I've tried or not... now that you mention it, I think I might have stuck a Katmai P3 450 in one of them! Yes, I did, now I think of it!

What's interesting about that particular system is that we had a 440LX-based system with a P2 233, 96Mb of PC66 RAM, Win98SE, and a Maxtor 7200rpm hard drive (its original drive had failed). I replaced it with the Gateway that I put the Katmai P3 450MHz into, with 192Mb of PC100 RAM, Windows2000, and an OEM 5400rpm drive. The user said the new computer seemed slower! Strong testimony about the performance impact of a faster hard drive... with double the MHz, double the RAM and a better OS, it was still perceived as being slower due to the slow hard drive.

 

[Assimilator1]

lol ,btw a 7200RPm in an old PII 233? ,that's rather posh
See you around in UT


yamyam
Looks like that PC will run a PIII 600 (Katamai) then.

 

[Yamyam]

Thanks! Is Katmai the only flavor of P3/600? And if not, would the other flavors work equally well? How can I tell which is which?



MechBgon, is it possible that the P3/450 wasn't recognized properly in BIOS, and the CPU and/or FSB were running slower than expected?



I've already upgraded her RAM to 320 Mb (64+256), and I won't have time for any "difficult" upgrades during my visit (hard drive, mobo, etc). I've gotta limit myself to upgrades I can complete very quickly/easily, without my tools and without disturbing all the applications and files on the system already. I think the CPU and maybe a few OS/browser settings are my only options right now.

 

[mechBgon]

I'll have to have a look at that system tomorrow and see what it says at boot-up, but at the worst, it should appear to the motherboard to be a Pentium2 instead of a Pentium3. But I'm pretty sure it's the hard drive that makes it seem slow... these scummy OEM Fujitsus and Western Digitals with the 128kb of cache are quite feeble.

Besides the Katmai-core P3 600, there was a Katmai-core P3 600B (B for 133MHz frontside bus, definitely not what you want for 440BX) and a Coppermine-core P3 600E (lower voltage, probably not gonna work) and 600EB (133MHz-based again). So you would want the Katmai version (0.25-micron construction, half-speed 512kb L2 cache) and not the Coppermine (0.18-micron, full-speed 256kb cache). And I don't know for a fact that the board has multipliers to go higher than 450MHz, so I'm not making any representations that it would work. Might be worth a little $30 gamble to double the MHz, if you found a P3 600 in the For Sale/Trade forum. Worst case, you can sell it off again.

BTW, I did a full-text search for "Katmai" as well as "P3" {and} "600" but there's nothing available in FS/T right now.

 

[Yamyam]

Sounds like it might be worth a shot..... but I don't think I could find a Katmai 600 for just $30. Have you seen the prices on those things? They go for over $100 on Ebay

 

[Assimilator1]

The multipliers are locked in the CPU so it doesn't matter what the brd shows or alledgedly supports

Its unlikely that your mbrd will support Coppermine CPU's ,unless GW say otherwise ,so don't try any other variants of the PIII 600.
Btw the Katamais also came at speeds of 450,500,533 & 550 ,forget the 533 as that is on a 133MHz FSB.If you can't get a 600 maybe you can find a 550?
Again avoid the Coppermines unless you find out for certain the mbrd supports it ,in which case go for a PIII 700-900

Btw if you can see a pic of a Slot1 CPU your interested in then look along its top edge ,there it will show cpu speed,cache size,cpu vcore & other stuff ,this will help you identify it ,as Mech said ,256k L2 cache=Coppermine ,512k cache=Katamai

 

[Assimilator1]

Hey I found this link by powerleap that might be useful

 

[Stallion]

Is some one looking for PIIIs?

 

[Yamyam]

Sure, whatcha got? I'm trying not to spend too much money here....

 

[Stallion]

I have a 550 katmai, a 600 coppermine and a 700@933 coppermine. I have talked to some one else about the 550 but I'm not sure if he wants it.