What's the fastest Celeron for a Soyo 7VMA-B???

[pigseye2]

I have a Soyo SY-7VMA-B motherboard and would like to upgrade the CPU but I have limited FSB and multiplier options.

At 66MHz FSB the multipliers available are 6.0 - 10.5
At 100MHz FSB the multipliers available are 5.0 - 8.5
At 133MHz FSB the multipliers available are 4.0 - 8.5

I wanted to go to a 1.1GHz Tualatin Celeron but can't see how to get there from here.

any thoughts?

thanks,
Pigseye

 

[pigsty]

I recently purchased the same motherboard from a local reseller who found the NEW, unopened box sitting on a shelf in acloset. The board had two defective (leaky, swollen) capacitors (listed as ELC04 and ELC05), both rated at 6.3V @ 2200uF. I replaced the bad caps with new ones and installed my 1.0 GHz P-III CPU, which uses the 133MHz FSB with a multiplier of 8.0 (133.33MHz x 8 = 1000MHz, or 1.0 GHZ). I've finished testing the system and did not encounter any problems with the repairs.

IIRC, the Tualatin Celerons use the 100 MHz FSB setting; the highest available 100MHz FSB multiplier from this mobo is 8.5, which means that your Tualatin Celeron would only run at 850MHz, substantially slower than the highest speed it is capable of reaching.

Given that information, I would manually set the system to run the CPU using the 133MHz FSB; you can do that through the BIOS options. Do NOT start at the highest multiplier or FSB settings; when you initially install the CPU, set it to run at the lowest 100MHz FSB setting (5.0 multiplier), and gradually increase it to the 8.5 multiplier. Once you know the CPU works properly throughout the 100 MHz FSB, you can then change the settings to the LOWEST multiplier on the 133MHz FSB, which is 4.0. Test the system for stability, then gradually increase the FSB multiplier to determine how well the CPU performs on the 133MHz FSB. I sincerely doubt that you'll have any problems using your Tualatin Celeron in the 1 GHz range, and possibly even higher, though you won't know for certain until you perform these tests.

Good luck with this; I hope you can keep this excellent old board working. I use this board with 1.5 GB of PC133 RAM as my home server (FreeNAS). The rig controls 8 IDE HDDs; four are attached to the primary and secondary IDE controllers, and four are attached to a Promise ATA133 PCI controller card. I've also installed a five port PCI USB 2.0 card and a NIC wired through my router. I don't have an optical drive in this system, because I see no need for it. This Soyo board is a great little workhorse, and I intend to use it until one of us wears out or disintegrates.

Yes, I fully realize that I've just replied to a VERY old thread, but I want to make the point that OLD hardware isn't always OBSOLETE hardware.

Best wishes and Happy New Year to all.

Pigpen, hanging out in the local pigsty