Best processor upgrade for a A-Bit BP6 motherboard?

[Alien]

One of my machines here is a A-Bit BP6 with two 500mhz Celeron processors (Celeron I, heh). It was used as a dualproc box for Win2k & Linux.

What's the best option for upgrading the processor in this box? Can I use Celeron II's and move up to 700, or does the firmware/design prevent this?

Thanks.

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Alien - Administrator / Owner
["Everything was true. God was an alien. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed]

 

[Diesel]

Initially, no, you will not be able to use a Celeron II. The BP6 is a socket 370 board, designed to take a PPGA Celeron.
PPGA is not compatible with FC-PGA, which is what the Celeron II is.
For one thing, the voltages between PPGA and FC-PGA are different, and the BP6 was not designed with support for those voltages.

However, a company called Powerleap makes a converter than allows you to put Celeron IIs or Pentium 3's into the BP6 and run them in dual config.
Using these converters, you could probably get the system to run.
Stability may be an issue, however, and you need to make sure the 2 CPUs are identical, down to the stepping, or it won't work.

Personally, the BP6 is a poor-man's SMP board. There are much better boards available that support dual FC-PGA chips inherently. If the system you're using this for is mission/performance-critical, I'd spend the extra money and buy a newer board and forgo the possible headaches involved with buying a converter for this, and a converter for that... just to keep an old board breathing a little past its life cycle.

Otherwise, a 533 Celeron PPGA will be the fastest you'll likely be able to go.

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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"

 

[WaterB]

in other words.. time to get a completely new 'puter

i'd suggest that you wait until Q1 where dual socketA motherboards will be introducted (some will also probably support DDR RAM)... get a couple durons and you can overclock them fairly well (avg about 950 easy). I guess the rest of the system would still be ok.. hd, cdrom, videocard etc...

 

[Diesel]

Yeah, if you already have 500's in there, moving to 533's really won't give you any increase.

I agree with WaterB. Hold onto this setup for the time being, and wait for Socket A SMP to become available. Then, just pop a pair of Durons in that baby and you'll be flying. Even the prices of the T-birds aren't thatr far off from the Celeron II. By then, the 1GHz should be so low in price, you could double your current speed without too much cash outlay.


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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"

 

[Diesel]

I agree with you to a point there JH.
If it's mission critical, obviously avoid overclocking, since stability is impacted.

However, if you're just talking performance (ie. just crunchin SETI@home, Prime95, etc.), an overclocked system will usually run faster than a comparable clock speed system due to the higher FSB. Everything is running faster, not just the CPU, so the overall system performance is boosted.

If stability is at all an issue, don't overclock. If you're just concerned with performance and can handle the occasional tweak-n-crash, it won't hurt to overclock.


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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"

 

[JHowse]

That's exactly what I was getting at.

Guess I didn't specify the second part that you pointed out.

You do make sure all the bases are covered.

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Does driving a car from Saturn make me an alien?

 

[Diesel]

That would be called "anally thorough".

Just trying to make sure there's no confusion that leads to an uneducated decision.


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spidergoolash: "heh, a cup of diesel dan - mwahhha"
me: "heh, a cup of me is like a cup of heaven!"

 

[Alien]

Hiyas,

Thanks for the information! For those that were curious, this particular box will just be used for Linux & Win2k as a dual proc box as it had previously been. Nothing mission critical. Just for all my Internet-related apps and work. Win9x/Me still works best for games on my reguler box. I'll be in NT most often. I'll probably wait a little longer on the motherboard/cpu front, and upgrade my harddrives (perhaps create a raid 0 config) and maybe add another 128meg stick of ram for better performance in the meantime.

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Alien - Administrator / Owner
["Everything was true. God was an alien. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed]

 

[Ski Bum]

I know some of you may fall off your chairs, but I actually agree with Dan on this.

I just decomissioned an Abit BP6 with dual Celeries, and it was the biggest pile of fertilizer that I've had to deal with yet. It was my Linux firewall box, and it was the most unstable machine that I've ever had at ANY clock speed. The fourth time it locked up and reported bad blocks during fsck, I rm'd Linux from the hdd, gutted it, put the machine back together with a slot 1 mobo, PII 400 running @ 468, reinstalled Mandrake, and I've not had a problem since.

Alien, if you're dead set on SMP, I'd wait for the dual Athlon motherboards, and go that route. They should be available sometime around the first of the year, and you should get a lot more bang for the buck that way.

Ski Bum

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Steep & Deep

 

[JHowse]

A tidbit of advice though. If this system is to be mission/performance critical, I recommend that you do not overclock the setup. Actually spend the money on quality components and concern yourself more with stability than sheer speed. I would even venture to guess that if you added more RAM to your current setup or even invested in SCSI technology, you'd get a noticeable speed boost. Am I correct in assuming this box is going to be used for server style applications?

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Does driving a car from Saturn make me an alien?