Upgrading laptop CPU

[king4lex]

Hi,

I'm trying to understand how upgrading a CPU works. Suppose I had a Dell Latitude LS (which has a Mobile PIII 400 Mhz BGA2 CPU). Would I be able to upgrade to a Mobile PIII 833 (edit: i meant 850) Mhz BGA2 CPU? Would it be as simply as pulling one out and putting the other in?

How would I know if the BIOS/mobo could support the higher speeds?

Thanks!

 

[DaveSimmons]

That one's a jump from 100fsb to 133fsb so seems unlikely. The 400 is probably on a BX-equivalent chipset motherboard rather than i810 or i815 equivalent.

One way to guess is to look at what CPUs were originally offered for that model line / year.

 

[king4lex]

Nope, both are 100fsb according to Intel's site. I believe the original CPUs offered were 400Mhz and 500Mhz.

 

[DaveSimmons]

850 is, but you had 833 before the edit.

 

[king4lex]

Hehe. Sorry about that. I'll edit my message again to make it clear that I did an edit.

Now that I've corrected the error, what do you think, would such a jump be possible? How would I know if it can be done?

 

[king4lex]

*bump*

Come on, can't anyone give me some advice on this?

 

[DaveSimmons]

On desktop boards, the BX chipset supported up to at least 1 GHz at 100 FSB, though a BIOS update was required on many boards to recognize faster CPUs

If you can find a BIOS update it might work, but cooling could be a problem since you're inserting a much hotter CPU.

 

[king4lex]

I've already found a BIOS update, although it doesn't say anything about increased CPU speed. The update is dated 2002, so the faster CPUs were definately out when it was released, though.

I'm not very familiar with laptop cooling techniques. What would I need to do to keep it cool?

 

[PING]

BTW, did you check if your laptop cpu is soldered into the motherboard or in socket? Old laptop pre-pentium 4 are usually soldered onto the motherboard.

 

[king4lex]

Its a BGA2 CPU, so it should not be soldered.