Need CPU Advice

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed Forsythe
  • Start date Start date
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Ed Forsythe

Hi Troops,
I'm going for a major upgrade in a few months but I need increased speed
immediately. I'm currently running an ABIT BE6II, 256 Megs Mushkin ,
Hi-Performance 133 SDRAM, 600MHz FCPGA Coppermine CPU (on a slotket). latest
BIOS (70). The only games/sims I'm using that mean anything are MS Flight
Sim 2004 (veeery slow :(), Links LS 2001, and Real Flight G2 (a radio
control model simulator).

What is the fastest CPU I may pop into the slotket? Celeron? I'd like to
increase my frame rates so that I could crank up the scenery and other
visual effects on FS2004. Just enough to keep me happy until I build my new
box (P4 3.2).
 
Ed Forsythe said:
Hi Troops,
I'm going for a major upgrade in a few months but I need increased speed
immediately. I'm currently running an ABIT BE6II, 256 Megs Mushkin ,
Hi-Performance 133 SDRAM, 600MHz FCPGA Coppermine CPU (on a slotket). latest
BIOS (70). The only games/sims I'm using that mean anything are MS Flight
Sim 2004 (veeery slow :(), Links LS 2001, and Real Flight G2 (a radio
control model simulator).

What is the fastest CPU I may pop into the slotket? Celeron? I'd like to
increase my frame rates so that I could crank up the scenery and other
visual effects on FS2004. Just enough to keep me happy until I build my new
box (P4 3.2).
Click to expand...

Is your existing cpu 100 or 133MHz FSB? If it's 100MHz, you
can get a lot more speed out of it by simply increasing your front
side bus to 133MHz (and probably higher) in the system bios.
Your slotket must support being able to set FSB via system
bios, but most do.

If you want more speed, the fastest option is to buy a FCPGA2
adapter for $20:
http://www.strattoncomputer.com/slot1-fcpga2.html

and a 1.4GHz Celeron or P3-S cpu. Powerleap also makes
these adapters but they supply their own voltage and are quite
a bit more expensive.

Make sure you have adequate airflow or other cooling on the
cpu area, especially on the capacitors behind the cpu.

Rick
 
Ed Forsythe said:
Hi Troops,
I'm going for a major upgrade in a few months but I need increased speed
immediately. I'm currently running an ABIT BE6II, 256 Megs Mushkin ,
Hi-Performance 133 SDRAM, 600MHz FCPGA Coppermine CPU (on a slotket). latest
BIOS (70). The only games/sims I'm using that mean anything are MS Flight
Sim 2004 (veeery slow :(), Links LS 2001, and Real Flight G2 (a radio
control model simulator).

What is the fastest CPU I may pop into the slotket? Celeron? I'd like to
increase my frame rates so that I could crank up the scenery and other
visual effects on FS2004. Just enough to keep me happy until I build my new
box (P4 3.2).
Click to expand...

Your motherboard specs say: Supports Intel Pentium III/Celeron
450~800MHz processor cartridge.

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=118
 
Hi Troops,
I'm going for a major upgrade in a few months but I need increased speed
immediately. I'm currently running an ABIT BE6II, 256 Megs Mushkin ,
Hi-Performance 133 SDRAM, 600MHz FCPGA Coppermine CPU (on a slotket). latest
BIOS (70). The only games/sims I'm using that mean anything are MS Flight
Sim 2004 (veeery slow :(), Links LS 2001, and Real Flight G2 (a radio
control model simulator).

What is the fastest CPU I may pop into the slotket? Celeron? I'd like to
increase my frame rates so that I could crank up the scenery and other
visual effects on FS2004. Just enough to keep me happy until I build my new
box (P4 3.2).
Click to expand...


Hi,

I have used the BE6-II v1.1 for the past 3-4 years, great mobo!. Just last
week I finally took the plunge and built a new AMD powerhouse. My BE6-II
still works great and I intend to keep it going as a second machine, I like
the idea that I can have a friend round for some *mini* LAN action. Now
enough of my waffle and back to the point. Your current CPU is a Coppermine
600E (I believe?), mine is a 550E. The really neat thing about the BE6-II
in its day was the ability to run a 133MHz FSB on the Intel BX chipset (as
well as ATA/66 HDD's). So if I'm right in thinking your 600MHz Coppermine
runs on a 100MHz-FSB (6 x 100MHz = 600MHz CPU) then you may be able to
squeeze some more MHz out of it. If you change the FSB speed in BIOS from
100MHz up to 133MHz you should be able to overclock your Chip to 800MHz (6 x
133MHz = 798MHz). This is what I did with my 550e, I turned it into a
733MHz CPU,and also got the *Full* use out of my PC133.

If you already know all of this then forgive me, hard to be sure from your
post. Anyway the BE6-II can accept over a 1GHz CPU. Also you can buy a
funky slocket adapter that will fit into your mobo that can then accept the
slightly better Tualatin PIII which goes up to 1.4GHz I believe. These
Tualatin PIII are pretty good performers as they have 512kb of full speed
level2 cache, compared to the older Coppermine's 256kb full speed. There
are also the Celeron versions.

If I was you I would *tweak* your current set-up to the max, without
spending any money on it if possible, then put every spare penny towards
your new system. . .I can tell you as a long term BE6-II, 550e @733MHz, 32MB
GeForceDDR user that the *step-up* to current hardware is absolutely
fantastic, I am loving my new Barton 2500+ NF7-S, Radeon 9800 set-up. . .
..and I have been a long term INTEL fan for many years, great company, great
CPU's mobos. . . .BUT don't just ignore AMD like I have done the past few
years, that nForce2 platform is just superb, really fast and stable, best
thing that ever happened for AMD was NVidia getting into the chipset
business.

Sorry to go on so much but I hope you enjoyed my spiel :P

Wayne ][
 
I used to run a 1GigP3-133 flipchip with 768meg ram at 136fsb 24/7, or 1
stick at 150+ fsb, but it takes a quality slocket such as the MSIv2.3 to
do it.


Ed said:
Hi Troops,
I'm going for a major upgrade in a few months but I need increased speed
immediately. I'm currently running an ABIT BE6II, 256 Megs Mushkin ,
Hi-Performance 133 SDRAM, 600MHz FCPGA Coppermine CPU (on a slotket). latest
BIOS (70). The only games/sims I'm using that mean anything are MS Flight
Sim 2004 (veeery slow :(), Links LS 2001, and Real Flight G2 (a radio
control model simulator).

What is the fastest CPU I may pop into the slotket? Celeron? I'd like to
increase my frame rates so that I could crank up the scenery and other
visual effects on FS2004. Just enough to keep me happy until I build my new
box (P4 3.2).
Click to expand...


--
Mark H --- Frag on !
NF7-S v2.0 Win2k-sp4
512k micron Bios 18
nvidia 2.45s
XP1700+@2200 1.65v
Radeon 9500 np 128
audigy & soundstorm
zoomless modem
300watt enlight
 
YOU ARE SOOOO RIGHT !! Now I hope they can implement quad pumped memory
architechture.

Wayne said:
best thing that ever happened for AMD was NVidia getting into the chipset
business.
Click to expand...



--
Mark H --- Frag on !
NF7-S v2.0 Win2k-sp4
512k micron Bios 18
nvidia 2.45s
XP1700+@2200 1.65v
Radeon 9500 np 128
audigy & soundstorm
zoomless modem
300watt enlight
 
I am a fairly heavy user of Real Flight G2. I have a gForce 3 ti 200
video card. With the default scenery and settings, 1024 x 768 16 bit
color is glitch free and continuous. My FSB is at 187. If I lower it
to the 133 neighborhood - Real Flight is no longer glitch free. My
cpu is a duron running at 1.1 gig.

For what your wanting, the video card is paramount. Second most
important thing is FSB speed, and third most important is cpu speed.
From what I have seen, you'll need a high speed video card to get the
scenery, and a high FSB to get glitch free performance. A high speed
cpu won't change things much.

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.comcast.net/~hal-9000/
 
Hi All,
Many thanks to all of you. About 6 months ago I was clocking my Coppermine
600E Flip Chip to 800 MHZ
by changing the bus speed from 100 to 133MHZ (running a Matrox Marvel
G200). Benchmarks improved but I didn't really *see* a significant increase
in performance. So after a couple of years I dropped back to 600MHZ. Then
I
upgraded from a Matrox Marvel G200 to an ATI 9500 Pro and decided to clock
again - no luck. The box
wouldn't boot, just a black screen. Apparently, the ATI card doesn't like
an 89MHz AGP bus. So it seems that I'm stuck at 600MHz until I upgrade to a
P4, 3.2GHz this fall. Thanks again for the help.
 
Well, you can always use something between 100 and 133. Even
crap cards like the ATI should be able to take a modest overclock.
Try starting at 100 and work your way up, in 5-8MHz increments.

Rick
 
Well, you can always use something between 100 and 133. Even
crap cards like the ATI should be able to take a modest overclock.
Try starting at 100 and work your way up, in 5-8MHz increments.
Click to expand...


Hi,

the problem there is, that you will then be running your PCI bus out of
spec. It's so nice when you can get a clean 133MHz-FSB, then you can use a
1/4 divider (33MHz) for the PCI and 2/3 for the AGP (89MHz).

Those were the days :P

Wayne ][
 
Wayne Youngman said:
Well, you can always use something between 100 and 133. Even
crap cards like the ATI should be able to take a modest overclock.
Try starting at 100 and work your way up, in 5-8MHz increments.
Click to expand...

Hi,

the problem there is, that you will then be running your PCI bus out of
spec. It's so nice when you can get a clean 133MHz-FSB, then you can use a
1/4 divider (33MHz) for the PCI and 2/3 for the AGP (89MHz).

Those were the days :P

Wayne ][
Click to expand...

The BE6-II has 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2 dividers for the PCI bus. One
of them will keep it close enough to the 33MHz spec.

Rick
 
I'm not familiar with the mobo. What chipset?

Owners of old mobos like the Abit BH6 (BX chipset) have been upgrading from
Copper Cellys to a Slot-T (or more expensive PowerLeap) + Tualatin Celly
1.2, 1.3 or 1.4.

Sorry if this irrelevant to your mobo.

Rick said:
Well, you can always use something between 100 and 133. Even
crap cards like the ATI should be able to take a modest overclock.
Try starting at 100 and work your way up, in 5-8MHz increments.
Click to expand...

Hi,

the problem there is, that you will then be running your PCI bus out of
spec. It's so nice when you can get a clean 133MHz-FSB, then you can use a
1/4 divider (33MHz) for the PCI and 2/3 for the AGP (89MHz).

Those were the days :P

Wayne ][
Click to expand...

The BE6-II has 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2 dividers for the PCI bus. One
of them will keep it close enough to the 33MHz spec.

Rick
Click to expand...
 
Hi All,
The problem isn't with the PCI bus, it's the AGP. when I overclock the 600E
by changing the FSB bus speed from 100MHz to 133MHz and selected the 2/3 AGP
divider, the AGP bus goes to 89MHz. My Matrox G200 didn't care but
apparently the ATI 9500 Pro doesn't like it. The Matrox cards were
amazingly tolerant of AGP bus overclocking.
--
Happy Flying,
Ed F.

tf said:
I'm not familiar with the mobo. What chipset?

Owners of old mobos like the Abit BH6 (BX chipset) have been upgrading from
Copper Cellys to a Slot-T (or more expensive PowerLeap) + Tualatin Celly
1.2, 1.3 or 1.4.

Sorry if this irrelevant to your mobo.

Rick said:
Well, you can always use something between 100 and 133. Even
crap cards like the ATI should be able to take a modest overclock.
Try starting at 100 and work your way up, in 5-8MHz increments.

Hi,

the problem there is, that you will then be running your PCI bus out of
spec. It's so nice when you can get a clean 133MHz-FSB, then you can use a
1/4 divider (33MHz) for the PCI and 2/3 for the AGP (89MHz).

Those were the days :P

Wayne ][
Click to expand...

The BE6-II has 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2 dividers for the PCI bus. One
of them will keep it close enough to the 33MHz spec.

Rick
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Update.

I did some more extensive testing with real flight G2.

The FSB, AGP, memory, and cpu clock all don't seem to make *any*
difference in "glitch free" performance with real flight. Or at
least, if there is a difference it isn't perceptible during play. A
600 MHz cpu works as well as a 1 GHz one. A 187 MHz FSB works as well
as a 100 MHz one. An AGP clock of 75 MHz works as well as a 66 MHz
one.

This leads me to believe that the amount of memory is a critical
factor for real flight. I have 64 MB of DDR memory on my video card
and 1024 x 768 seems to be the highest glitch free resolution.
Although 1280 x 1024 is fairly close to glitch free. I would guess
that 128 MB of video memory would be needed for glitch free 1280 x
1024 resolution play.

Forrest

Motherboard Help By HAL web site:
http://home.comcast.net/~hal-9000/
 
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