How do I upgrade my CPU?

[SeeMoreDigital]

My HTPC currently has an 800MHz P3 socket 370 CPU installed on my MSI - 6309 motherboard

However, a friend of mine has given me a 'working' Celeron 1.4GHz (256Kb) to try!

I tried simply exchanging the CPU but nothing happened. The PC did'nt even get to the BIOS boot!

Is there anything I should be doing in the BIOS before hand?

Cheers

[Angelus]

You have to make sure that the motherboard supports the processor chipset of the celeron you are trying to upgrade to...I would suggest looking on the msi website or your documentation and see if it's supported on your motherboard.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Angelus
You have to make sure that the motherboard supports the processor chipset of the celeron you are trying to upgrade to...I would suggest looking on the msi website or your documentation and see if it's supported on your motherboard. I tried this but the information seemed a little vague to me. Probably because I don't have the correct level of understanding!

The first (and last) time I upgraded the BIOS. I nearly trashed everything!

Any help would be much appreciated as my emails to MSI went unanswered.

Cheers

[vinkes]

a 1,4 ghz celeron won't work in your motherboard. The 1,4ghz celeron is based on a newer core which i believe was called 'tatualin' or something like that. Your motherboard will only accept celeron based on the older core with 128kb of l2 cache.
I had the same problem about 2 years ago, not even a bios flash will resolve your problem. So I guess it's back to the 800mhz p3.

(btw, the older celeron core only goes to 1ghz, which is very hard to obtain and probably slower than your 800mhz p3.)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Damn!

Never mind. If I can't use it I wonder if my best buddy bond can make use of it instead?

Are you listening?

Thanks for confirming the situation.

Cheers

[bond]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
If I can't use it I wonder if my best buddy bond can make use of it instead?thanks, but i also have an old p3 866mhz (370 socket), guess the same as for you goes for me

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
thanks, but i also have an old p3 866mhz (370 socket), guess the same as for you goes for me You never know. You might have a motherboard that can take it!

Cheers

[kadajawi]

well, there IS the possibility to use that tualatin. Maybe. PowerLeap and probably one or two other companys have built an adapter, to allow this. You would have to check on their site if your board is supported. But these adapters were rather expensive, last time I checked. Anyway, in that case you can (maybe) modify the CPU or the board. Essentially Intel wanted the people to buy a new board if they wanted to upgrade... modifying a few pins (I recall something like taping them) should work. But there was another problem, the voltage, something like the tualatin liked less voltage, so it depends on your board if you can run it with the specified voltage. Or use the adapter, which should have a voltage regulator.
Anyway, its a looooong time ago, and it is very late here, so before I type any nonsense you can ask google, there should be plenty of sites explaining the operation.

Any mistakes/false informations are due to the fact that I'm almost dropping from my chair and landing with my head on the keyboard while dreaming of... well, whatever. Damn, I was so tired that I accidently deleted the wrong file... :eek:

[vinkes]

Originally posted by kadajawi

Any mistakes/false informations are due to the fact that I'm almost dropping from my chair and landing with my head on the keyboard while dreaming of... well, whatever. Damn, I was so tired that I accidently deleted the wrong file... :eek:

Now that you say this, you're absolutely right. Powerleap did make a converter for the use tuatalin, I wonder if you can purchase this product somewhere. (perhaps ebay)

[Mnl]

Well i'm afraid that powerleap is not compatible with the MSI-6309 motherboard. I just went to the manual compatibility (http://www.powerleap.com/SystemSearch.html) check at their website, and it seems that the motherboard doesn't work with any of their products :(

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Mnl
Well i'm afraid that powerleap is not compatible with the MSI-6309 motherboard. I just went to the manual compatibility (http://www.powerleap.com/SystemSearch.html) check at their website, and it seems that the motherboard doesn't work with any of their products :( So I suppose the question that needs to be asked is: What motherboard will an Celeron 1.4GHz (256Kb) socket 370 CPU work with?

And as it's not suitable for use with my crappy low spec MSI-6309 motherboard... I guess it's up for grabs!

Cheers

[kadajawi]

Most of the BX boards should work (except mine...) with adapter, and the newer ones from Intel work without adapter, just check for compatibility with tualatins or 1.4 gig p3/celerons.

[Wolfman]

You might find a new mobo quite cheap on ebay if you really want to use that chip..But I suspect that a 1.4ghz celeron wont be that much better than a p3 800, maybe 10-15% and thats purely on the faster clock speed.

[kadajawi]

I recall the tualatins being superb chips, able to beat the first P4s, if overclocked. And they could overclock pretty well.

[vinkes]

Although it is a long time ago, kadajawi is right for a part.

The first tualatins chips were able to beat the early p4's. However these were pentium 3's based on the tualatin core, Seemoredigital has got an celeron based tualatin which has a cutdown L2 cache and fewer pipelines (I believe, correct me if I am wrong).

You might get a cheap and compatible motherboard, but isn't wiser to upgrade to something faster and more durable for the future? Perhaps an amd mobo and a cheap duron 1600 or 1800 mhz?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks again for all the replays.

On the strength of what you guys have discussed, I've started looking for a new motherboard/processor combination.

The new combination will be used to form a new HTPC. And as my Xcard will be doing Mpeg1, 2 and 4 audio and video decoding (in hardware), I guess the new motherboard could incorporate on board video and audio - although it would be nice for the audio to be 6Ch.

Anyway, as I thought. The Celeron chip is now up for grabs!

Cheers