Thinking of upgrading my P3 computer to a P4, what can I use and not use

[cotton]

Hi
Its been a while since I built my system and have not really kept up with requirements. I would like to upgrade my P3 600 to a P4 What I need to know is, what of my existing hardware can or cannot be used.

InWin ATX full tower with a 300 watt power supply
128megs of Crucial PC133 ram
Soundblaster Live
3com PCI NIC card
Tekram PCI Scsi card
Voodoo 5500 AGP card
USR PCI modem

Is it possible to use the InWin case and powersupply or can I replace the powersupply only. Will the motherboard line up with the holes in this older case.
What recommendations also for a motherboard (have used Asus in the past and have had no problems)

Any other things that I should know about the use of a P4 and current P4 motherboards ?
Thanks

 

[shathal]

It's not an incompatibility (not on Intel's side anyway) - it's how 3DFX "cheated" with the Voodoo5.

The Voodoo4 & Voodoo5 are supposed to be working with AGP 4x - AGP 4x spec says that cards should run at 1.5V - AGP 1x/2x run at 3.3V! Now, this would have been fine & dandy with everybody & no-one might have noticed, if Intel's 850 chipset wouldn't include an AGP 4x slot only (and - nicely according to spec, this one runs at 1.5V).

3DFX had something up on their www-site, I read about this & just smiled at how at "cheap" attempt of theirs to cheat had failed in an ironic way - shame though, usually I'm all for 3DFX...

What you CAN use:
* Soundblaster Live
* 3com PCI NIC card
* Tekram PCI Scsi card
* USR PCI modem


What you CAN'T use:
* Chassis + PSU (I *really* recommend getting an ATX12V chassis/PSU for the propper cooling). Trust me - I've had enough bad experiences with ppl trying to get away "cheap" with ATX PSU's/chassis. Not worth the trouble - really not. PSU should be 300W or better.
* Vodoo5 5500 (see above)
* 128megs of Crucial PC133 ram (RIMMs for you, mate - or wait for VIA's DDR chipset. Intel's SDRAM chipset shouldn't be too far off either. But if you're a gamer, I would recommend RIMMs.)

Hope this helps you, mate .

P.S.: Don't forget that you need to install RIMMs (on the i840 & i850) in pairs of 2. i850 also only supports PC600 and PC800 RIMMs - I would recommend (due to price-similarity) to only use 800 MHz, as P4 is very memory-bandwidth oriented .

 

[gfgray]

Shathal pretty much covered it except the P4 requires an additional connector on the power supply. You can buy the connector separately or you can get a power supply that is already designed to work with the pentium 4.

I think Intel will completely abandon RIMMS. So, you may be better off waiting for the Intel DDR chipset to come out. I wouldn't recommend a VIA chipset because half the reason of buying an Intel proccessor is so that you can use an Intel chipset. Compatibility issues are caused by (bad) chipsets not CPUs - unless you have a Cyrix CPU . Intel is also abandoning the current P4 standard socket423 for some other socket. So if you buy today, you can't upgrade your CPU without either an adapter or a new motherboard.