Socket 5: Tuning Old PC Systems

Conclusion: Powerful Performance Injection For Socket 5 Boards

Our tests have shown that the efficiency of a Pentium 75 Socket 5 system that is more than six years old can be greatly improved by means of selective tuning. Only an upgrade socket from Socket 5 to Socket 7 is necessary. We used an adapter from Powerleap . As a result, a processor bus clock restricted to 66 MHz offers a maximum achievable CPU clock rate of 400 MHz (66 MHz x 6 = 400 MHz). This clock increase is still quite substantial, especially when you consider that a Pentium 75 was used originally. The increase in frequency turns out to be more advantageous with some Socket 7 boards based on Intel's 430HX chipset. Some of these offer a processor bus clock of up to 83 MHz , to reach a processor core clock of up to 500 MHz.

Still every user should think carefully about planning an upgrade. Unfortunately it is still impossible to tune one of those oldies as much that it would achieve the performance of today's computers. The actual purpose should be to optimize the old hardware so that it runs a modern operating system as e.g. Windows 98. The benchmark results demonstrate very clearly that our PC increased its performance tremendously with the AMD K6-2/400. The Sysmark2000 benchmark proved it. Similarly, with Quake III Arena we achieved almost twice the frame rate. Ultimately though, the optimized system is way behind the results of modern boards with a Socket 370 or Socket 462.

The table below once again summarizes the costs for an upgrade. Note that we've also marked the mobile K6 versions with a "+". If you can't get hold of an K6-2/III 400 MHz anymore, you have to resort to an 450 or even 500 MHz version. Please don't forget that these models will still be limited to 400 MHz, because the old boards are not able to supply the required processor bus clock of 100 MHz.

* limited to 6x66 MHz = 400 MHz

Costs for the simple upgrade of an old Socket 5 system.