Updating an older MoBo

[excitron]

I have an old MSI K7T Turbo-R Limited motherboard running a T-Bird Athlon 1.4 gig with 1 gig PC133 ram using the VIA KT-133A chipset. Is it possible to use a newer Athlon XP CPU on this motherboard? If so, which ones? Also, are there any BIOS particulars I should be aware of with these newer chips? Thanks for any info on this.

 

[endyen]

That mobo officially supports only up to the palomino xp1800 cpu. Just the same, I would try a faster chip. The only difference between the A and B chip is .1 volts. This is well within the tolerence of the B chip, though if your temps run a bit high, you may need a better fan.

 

[ChipDeath]

Just on an aside note, make sure you get a 133 (266DDR) Bus CPU, as your board won't support any faster.. I think that limits you to an XP 2400+, IIRC..

you may need a newer BIOS to get access to lower Voltages, but I think older durons used lower volts, so you should be ok. (check your BIOS - see what options it gives under CPU Vcore. if you can get ~1.65V or lower, you'll be OK)

although you may well need a better cooler, as endyen says, (although IIRC, T-bird 1.4s were pretty hot chips, so you may be ok there)

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[Groveling_Wyrm]

Yes, you can use a faster processor in that board. XP 2400+ is as good as you will most likely find, though. However, you may actually get lucky and find a 266Mhz FSB XP 2600+ which was briefly produced.

However, I would strongly consider a mobo upgrade, and DDR, so you will be better positioned to take full advantage of the speed of the newer processor.

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[ChipDeath]

I would agree on the mobo upgrade idea. in fact, if you got an nforce2 board, you could get a nice low-rated T-bred 'B' (e.g. an XP1800+) and overclock it up to well beyond the performance of a stock XP2400+... in that respect, a mobo upgrade <i>saves</i> you money...

Although in real terms you'd still have to fork out for DDR RAM, & a mobo, so you would pay more... you <i>could</i> get the mobo & RAM, and re-use your existing Tbird though, at least until you can afford a new CPU as well - You'd still get a performance boost equivalent to sticking a faster chip in your current board, possibly more than that (plus gives you more future upgrade possibilities).

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[excitron]

Thanks for the replies folks. I want to take the most painless route on this and that's why I wanted to just stick some better chip in there if possible. I'm actually building a second machine based on either an XP 3000 or a 2.8 gig P4, and I want the present system to augment it. Therefore the path of least resistance. I'll look into the chips mentioned, thanks.

 

[excitron]

Well, I did a quick check online and found an "AMD ATHLON XP 2600+ 2.133GHz 266FSB OEM SOCKET-A PROCESSOR" which as far as I can tell is what you're referring to.

I checked my Vcore voltage options, and I have options from 1.550 to 1.850 in .0250 volt increments, presently set to "DEFAULT" (not sure what that is). I also have Vio options of 3.3 and 3.45 V, set to 3.3. Would I need to change this, or is the Vcore the only voltage I have to change?

Although I built this machine fram scratch, I left everything at default, as I'm not well versed on these parameters. I don't want to overclock this new replacement chip, I just want to slip it in the place of the present T-Bird. I'd be pretty happy if this works.

Thanks again for everyone's replies.