Pentium 3 Coppermine-T Compatibility

[boxil]

Hi, I have a motherboard that I know is compatible with the Pentium 3 Coppermine processors with FC-PGA packaging (SL52R). I'm considering putting in a Pentium 3 Coppermine-T processor (SL5QJ), which actually has FC-PGA2 packaging.
My understanding is that, normally a FC-PGA2 processor wouldn't be compatible with a FC-PGA supporting motherboard, but I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III#Coppermine-T) that Coppermine-T processors are backwards compatible? I wanted to ask if this was indeed true for the SL5QJ? Or would I need some kind of a socket adapter?

SL52R (Coppermine, FC-PGA): http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL52R.html
SL5QJ (Coppermine-T, FC-PGA2): http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5QJ.html

Thanks in advance

 

[Mondoman]

Sorry, but I don't think you'll find anyone here with practical experience with such old stuff.

 

[joefriday]

Common Mondoman, I just retrofitted a Tualatin last week (and yesterday I pencil modded a Duron)!

As for the Coppermine-T, that was a CPU that's wrapped up more in myth than fact. Personally, I'm not sure what to think of them. Ya, they (sorta) existed, but it seems to me that either a) it's just a coppermine cpu that may or may not have the IHS which means is no better than just a regular old coppermine, or b) it's a tualatin CPU, and in that case, it would almost HAVE to have the same pinouts as all the Tualatins that came after it, meaning it would require Tualatin support to run (or you'd have to modify it to work in pre-tualatin boards).

And about the socket adapter. I have two Lin-Lin Tualatin socket adapters. I picked them up about 3 years ago when there were still some around. Anymore, I cannot find a single vendor still selling those adapters, and lets not forget, those things still cost around $15-$20 new if you can find them, which is a waste of money anymore for such outdated technology.

Do what you want with a coppermine-T. Hell, they're cheap enough if you look on ebay for them, just remember to go into this project knowing there may be a good chance this "coppermine-T" probably won't work on a pre-tualatin board. On the bright side, if it doesn't work, well the CPUs are so cheap anymore that you could try the down and dirty tualatin mod to force it to work in your older chipset motherboard. Worked for me. I had to break off 3 pins and bridged 18 others (don't know if I HAD to bridge that many, but there was no way I was going to test it after every single bridge, so I just did them all to save time). Good old lunchbox is still around to serve up the info:
http://www.geocities.com/_lunchbox/articles.html

 

[Mondoman]

Nice to be proved wrong on this, joe - thanks!

 

[average joe]

Hi, I have a motherboard that I know is compatible with the Pentium 3 Coppermine processors with FC-PGA packaging (SL52R). I'm considering putting in a Pentium 3 Coppermine-T processor (SL5QJ), which actually has FC-PGA2 packaging.
My understanding is that, normally a FC-PGA2 processor wouldn't be compatible with a FC-PGA supporting motherboard, but I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III#Coppermine-T) that Coppermine-T processors are backwards compatible? I wanted to ask if this was indeed true for the SL5QJ? Or would I need some kind of a socket adapter?

SL52R (Coppermine, FC-PGA): http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL52R.html
SL5QJ (Coppermine-T, FC-PGA2): http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5QJ.html

Thanks in advance

It should work fine the FC-PGA2 package was designed to drop into the existing socket 370 boards (FC-PGA). You might need a bios update if you need anything. The main issue with the P3's back then for Intel was in trying to achieve higher clockspeeds. There was a big recall on the 1.13 ghz PIII chip. The Coppermine-T required less power so it generated less heat than the coppermine allowing them to clock it a little higher. They added circuitry so the chip would auto detect the voltages on older socket 370 boards. If you had a newer coppermine-t 370 board you supposedly would get a speed boost through support for multi-threading which the older boards didn't support.


Trivia: The original Xbox has a modified PIII 700 in it. It also uses a socket 370 board. The Cisco PIX routers were all PII 450's running 440bx chipsets. They moved some up to PIII 1ghz for premium models. That might be a place to find a chip.

 

[boxil]

Wow, bridging so many pins - don't think I would have the skills to do that lol. I might try if I get really stuck.
But as Average Joe says, hopefully this SL5QJ should work. I've ordered it off eBay - will find out how it fares next week.

Thanks!

 

[Hellboy]

Wow, bridging so many pins - don't think I would have the skills to do that lol. I might try if I get really stuck.
But as Average Joe says, hopefully this SL5QJ should work. I've ordered it off eBay - will find out how it fares next week.

Thanks!

If i remember it was only the latter boards that supported the new chips,, but by then the early pentium 4 started comming out after the fiasco with the 1.13GHz crashing

Didnt they go to 1.4 on a pentium 3 for laptops before pentium M came out....

Pentium 3s are so yesterday - i still got some 1ghz ones plus knocking around somewhere...

Retro.. oh well...

 

[p75]

Pentium 3s are so yesterday - i still got some 1ghz ones plus knocking around somewhere...

Retro.. oh well...

I have an old P3 1Ghz EB and I was wondering what you could do with a P3 now?

I noticed it's fast with windows 98 though.

 

[Hellboy]

I have an old P3 1Ghz EB and I was wondering what you could do with a P3 now?

I noticed it's fast with windows 98 though.

Run XP at a reasonable speed but it still needs lots of ram though.. Its not lightning with xp but its usable.. I setup a p3 700 dell laptop the other day, put some extra ram in it and it werent that bad considering...

 

[p75]

By the looks of things, it won't be very good at running xp then.

I only have 256mb SD Ram on it.

Is the P3 good at overclocking? because I can only get it to about 1.08 which is poor. It's unstable on anything else or just won't boot.

It might be the rubbish motherboard I have though. This is the motherboard I have.
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/aopen/mx3s-b.htm

 

[spathotan]

You cant expect to do a whole lot with legacy hardware. It was a good chip 9 years ago.

 

[joefriday]

Exactly. The reason why I modded a Tualatin? My wife's cousin is using an old P3 computer that I built for her out of free parts a couple years back. She needed a computer for school, but didn't have any money to afford a "real" computer, so I found her a cheap flatpanel 17" off CL and built the rest. The rig was okay for most internet browsing, but when it came to flash video, the poor 800MHz Celeron just couldn't keep up with the content at Hulu.com. The Tualatin-S 1.266 GHz CPU I modded helped quite a bit. She's happy with it, and it cost me just 5 bucks.

 

[Hellboy]

By the looks of things, it won't be very good at running xp then.

I only have 256mb SD Ram on it.

Is the P3 good at overclocking? because I can only get it to about 1.08 which is poor. It's unstable on anything else or just won't boot.

It might be the rubbish motherboard I have though. This is the motherboard I have.
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/aopen/mx3s-b.htm

The best boards for overclocking at that time were Asus, Aopen were never really good overclockers..

256 will be okayish,, seach on ebay for another 256 133 ram it should cost less than $10 and youll have a usable machine...

256 just doesnt cut it if you put AVG on it...

 

[average joe]

It will run Linux much better than Windows. Linux has very low HW requirements.

In fact, its often hard to get drivers for new hardware under linux. You're better off with a little bit older hardware.. This is getting to be less true but it is still the case that you really dont get a driver unless someone chooses to write one for free.