Pentium 3 Upgrade

[soulz9]

I need help upgrading my friends old Desktop. Specs as follows:

500 MHz
888 SDRAM
20gb harddisk
Motherboard Graphic card

I was planning to upgrade he's Processor, what would you guys preffer for a
decent processor? Can I use pentium 4 or does it need a new motherboard?

[gameman733]

It will need a new motherboard, and buy upgrading the motherboard, your going to need to get new ram (and possibly a new graphics card if the motherboard doesnt have it built in).

As far as choosing an upgrade, I would say go ahead and get a P4 ( or maybe athlon 64) and a new motherboard and RAM.

[General Plot]

Don't forget the larger wattage PSU, also, if the system is that old, consider adding newer/larger hard drives and optical burners (if he doesn't already have some). All in all, a complete system overhaul.

[soulz9]

What about just upgrading the processor? What are my choices?

[General Plot]

If it's the Slot 1 design, then just a processor upgrade is out of question. The newer Coppermine P3's had a standard socket on board, much like the design of the P4's of today, only with less pins. I believe the biggest Slot 1 P3 was 600 Mhz. And given the speed of the chip in there, I'm certain it's slot 1. So not much can be done for it. Possibly add some more memory, but really it won't do too much for the rig. If you look around on ebay, you can usually find good deals on "barebones kits" which are basically the motherboard, processor and sometimes the RAM. Also, the majority of the kits come with new cases and PSU's, so that most of the overhaul is covered. Other than that, I can't really think of anything else that can be done.

[soulz9]

Its deffinetly not like the P4 motherboard, I've never delt with P3 motherboards and processors. I think its a black huge thing on the motherboard is that the processor? I searched for 1ghz P3 processor and found it, will that fit with the Slot 1?

[soulz9]

The motherboard is something close to this image.

[liquid]

it's probably going to be a pain to track down refurbished parts which are compatible with that motherboard; not that it can't be done but it is certainly more effort than it's worth.

At this point that system is very obsolete. You should consider buying a brand new computer instead of trying to upgrade what you currently have.

[liquid]

Originally Posted by soulz9

Its deffinetly not like the P4 motherboard, I've never delt with P3 motherboards and processors. I think its a black huge thing on the motherboard is that the processor? I searched for 1ghz P3 processor and found it, will that fit with the Slot 1?

yes that is the processor block it contains the CPU and L2 Cache (on Bus instead of on Chip). Make sure the processor you are looking at is a P3 SLOT 1 and not SOCKET xxx or SLOT 2.

futhermore, you should consult the manual that came with the motherboard. It should tell you up to what speed processor it can take. Since it needs to have the correct Front Side Bus and Multiplier Clock to support the 1Ghz cpu.

[Player-X]

If you want it to upgrade it you will need to buy a new Mobo as slot 1 processors that goes any faster than 500MHz are hard to find right now as well as the fact that if you upgrade it to another P3 it will soon need another upgrade sooner and in the long run costs more than just getting a P4 mobo and a P4 in one go

[General Plot]

Originally Posted by soulz9

Its deffinetly not like the P4 motherboard

I only meant that the newer P3's had a socket design where the chip was installed driectly to the motherboard, instead of boxed in an SECC (like the Slot 1 sockets). Yeah, 600 Mhz is the fastest Slot 1 made, so it's definitely not worth it. 100 Mhz extra is not going to make it worth your while.

[soulz9]

Thanks for the help everyone. Is it possible that I can switch the processor with the Celeron or AMD Processor? About the making sure the processor I have is a P3 Slot 1 and not a socket or slot 2, how am I supposed to know?

[Player-X]

If you switch to the celeron it would be a downgrade and you will need a new motherboard if you want to go with AMD

[mg2]

Why would it be a downgrade if he switched to a celeron?

[Player-X]

A celeron is the low cost stripped down version of the Pentium line of processors, I am assuming that he will be using the same motherboard if he changes only the processor

[KillerShots]

Originally Posted by mg2

Why would it be a downgrade if he switched to a celeron?

Even high-speed celerons won't perform as well as a 500 MHz P3 for a lot of applications. For a few simple applications, a Celeron would do well. For music composition and probably gaming as well, a Celeron is plain suicide (a long time ago, I set my little bro up on a Celery and he couldn't do composition (his college major) - the midi playback came out extremely choppy. Obviously, that wouldn't work, so a bit of $ was wasted, and the CPU was thrown in the garbage).

[General Plot]

Plain and simple soulz9, the best chip possible for that board is a 600 Mhz P3, and being that the one in there already is 500 Mhz, you're very close to having the largest processor that motherboard will allow. Definitely do not put a Celeron in there. Celeron's have lower cache (which results in more cache misses) and this makes a huge difference in performance.

[Player-X]

Basicly what we are saying is you need to change the Mobo and procesor to upgrade that computer

[soulz9]

Thanks a lot everyone.