Another PII to PIII

Todd,

Board revision will be printed on the board between two of the PCI slots. You'll probably need a good flashlight.

As long as you have a rev 1.02 or greater board you can run any E chip (but I have an unconfirmed rumor that EB chips will NOT work in 1.02 or 1.03 boards).

The E designates a coppermine (0.18 micron) core. All PIII-800 chips are "E", even if the retailer doesn't mention it. An EB designates a coppermine core designed for a 133MHz FSB.

You can use any E chip right up to the OEM (extremely hard to find) 1100E chips. You're best bet is an 800. You can then o/c your FSB to 112MHz and wind it up to 900 easily. I have an Asus P2B-D with a couple of PIII-800E chips and that's what I do with mine.

If your slocket has a voltage adjustment it will probably have lots of jumpers on it. You'll have to set it at 1.80 volts. If your slocket doesn't have the adjustment I can tell you how to do it another way, but it's a little tricker.

If you do go for the PIII-800E try and get a cD0 stepping.

- JW

OK, first of all, ALL these baords have SOME support for Coppermines regardless of revision. The earlier boards could not support the lower VOLTAGE of the Coppermine, which was easy to remedy-using a slotket to make the board detect the voltage at 1.85v. You don't even need an adjustable slotket to do that, you can modify a standard one. See <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=640991#640991" target="_new">THIS POST</A> for more.
The fastest ordinary PIII at 100MHz FSB was not 800MHz, but 850MHz. Those will work. Also a small number of 900E and 1000E processors were made, but are normally more expensive than their faster 133FSB counterparts do to rarity.
Have you considered running at 133FSB? You could get much better performance with these, the 1000EB is now more reasonably priced.

The fastest CPU your board supports is the PIII 1000EB, at 7.5x133. The highest automatically detected multiplier it supports is 10x. Manual multiplier changes are not used on PIII's. There is a third party BIOS available that supports up to 12x multipliers, and cost $10.

The 800 was available in two speeds, 800E at 18x00FSB and 800EB at 6x133FSB. Normall Coppermines are at 1.65-1.75v. The newer they are, the higher their stock voltage. I have personally tested these things up to 2.6v without damage, but recommend 2.05v or less for extended use. If your board is too early to support the lower voltages, using 1.85v has proven to be a safe alternative.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Ok I have the HW revision of 1.02 so I think I am ok to go for the E chips. 800 is what asus says the mb supports but its ok to put a 850 because of auto detection and locked multiplier? ... I think I am learning something .. just enough to be dangerous =)