This post may belong in the mobo forum, I thought I'd try it here first.
apologies to all if I have that wrong.

Newbie question 1

Will a Northwood P4 CPU run in a Willamette socket 478 mobo?

I was given a working Abit BD7-II mobo with a Celeron 1.7GHz 128/400/1.75V
It has the 845E chipset which supports 400 and 533 MHz FSB.
The bios also supports 400, 533 and hyper threading.

I want to upgrade the processor.
I believe the fastest Willamette P4 is 2.0 GHz 256/400/1.75V

A Northwood P4 has 512/533/1.5V plus a higher clock. But will it work?


Question 2:
What type of 184 pin DDR RAM (not DDR2) runs at 533MHz?

thanks for your help!

You'll have to check on the Abit website to see exactly which CPUs the board supports. There may be a newer BIOS version out for the motherboard (which you should update while running the Celeron CPU before attempting to upgrade the CPU).

Intel designs have a memory bus decoupled from the CPU, so RAM speed is not dependent on FSB speed. You'll want to get PC3200 (DDR-400) RAM.

Finally, if Windows seems too slow (a likely possibility), try Ubuntu Linux. It's free and you can start by running it off the distribution CD without making any permanent changes to your system.

A 512/533/1.5v Northwood core would work.
A 512/800/1.5v northwood would work but be underclocked.
PC2100 ram would work but PC3200 ram is about the same price and could be run at tighter timings.

Sorry but I looked everywhere and Abit doesn't have a listing of CPU support for their boards. Seems kinda crappy since you can't see which board supports what. I do know that the 845 chipset will support a 800MHz FSB chip, remember that its 200MHz quad fired and the memory is 400MHzx2 to match.

I'll keep looking but Abits sit so far sucks.

Having brain farts here... isn't the Willamette a 423 socket? Or were their 478 models?

Sorry but I looked everywhere and Abit doesn't have a listing of CPU support for their boards. Seems kinda crappy since you can't see which board supports what. I do know that the 845 chipset will support a 800MHz FSB chip, remember that its 200MHz quad fired and the memory is 400MHzx2 to match.

I'll keep looking but Abits sit so far sucks.

I know Willamette started on 423 but it might have gone into 478 in the later end of the line steppings when Northwood came out.

Thing is Abits website is horrible with very little knowledge on their own mobos.

Hmmm.. That was sooo long ago it seems.

I did find this:

http://www.shopping.com/xPF-Abit-BD7II

The spec's bascially would say it would support the P4 (533 bus):

That is if I found the right MB.

js, perhaps you were looking in the wrong place. Abit does have their CPU support lists here: http://www.abit.com.tw/cpu-support-list/index.htm
However, since your MB is 6 years old, it seems their CPU list doesn't quite include it. I did find a number of reviews of your board; here's one: http://www.hexus.net/content/item. [...] 390&page=1

However, the abit site does have BIOS updates, etc for your MB. For example, here is the BIOS download page: http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/dow [...] cket%20478
(I'm assuming you have the "RAID" version of the MB; otherwise you can look it up yourself at the site home page: http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/index.php )
As you can see on the BIOS downloads, the most recent one is dated July 22, 2003, and includes CPU microcode updates (presumably for some new CPUs). I'd contact Abit tech support to find out exactly which Pentium 4s are supported.

The main potential problem I see is that whatever BIOS you have on your board will limit how new of a CPU you can use, due to voltage settings for the CPU and microcode updates for the CPU.