Safe to put newer processor on older motherboard?

[SnoopCat]

I currently have a 850mhz amd antholon processor on my msi pro-2a motherboard. The manual to this board says it can handle up to a 1.2 amd antholon processor.

I just got a Athlon xp 1600 processor from a friend. Will it be safe to use this processor on my msi-pro2a board at a speed of 1.2 ghz?

 

[Matthias99]

"Athlon", not "antholon". You could check with MSI, but it will *probably* work; the manual may have been written when 1.2Ghz was the highest speed processor available! Worst case is that it doesn't boot up with it.

There may also be a BIOS upgrade available that will let it work with newer processors (up to a point, anyway).

 

[LTC8K6]

You might get it to work at 100 X 14. It's hard to say. The board should support T-birds up to 1.4Ghz.
Difficult to say what it will do with a Palomino.

 

[CKTurbo128]

It's most likely you won't be able to use an XP in the older Socket A board. However, you can use your XP in your motherboard using this CPU adapter:

http://www.upgradeware.com/eng...roduct/xptmc/xptmc.htm