CPU / Motherboard Question

Hi,

Just a quick question really, I am upgrading a PC for a member of my family and have finally found the mainboard manual via the net. The board is quite old and it is currently running an AMD K6-2 CPU and according to the manual it states that this is the highest processort unit that this mb can run.

However I was wondering if perhaps there was a cross over in dates that a newer CPU which is compatiable with Socket 7 MB's was released after the manual was released, is it therefore possible that the MB could run a higher spec CPU??

I don't think so.

You might be able to run a k6-3 in it, which is basically a k6-2 with more on-die cache, I believe. They are cheap, when you can find them, a k6-3 could give you a boost, more if you get a higher clock speed than the increase in cache.

Check your motherboard manufacturer's site for any BIOS updates, and read the changelog/README for whatever the most recent BIOS version is.

K6-2 chips are still pretty darn fast, if you're going to use it as a server or whatever. You'll most definitly saturate your bandwidth before you saturate your processor, barring extreme circumstances.

Silky,
All the newest AMD chips are Socket A, and are not the same as Socket 7. You'll need to get a new board/chip and probably a powersupply. The latest chips need at least a 300watt power supply to run stably.

You may also need new ram. Most new boards also run ddr ram, older boards ran sdram.

I heard the fastest a socket 7 can support is a K6-2 500MHz... I remember building a home server, adn the fast chip I could find for a socket 7 was the K6-2.

Not sure if I'm correct, but this is what I heard. If I'm wrong, someone correct me.

The top processor for the Socket 7 platform is the K6-III. I think the fastest flavor was 550Mhz?? And the best flavor of that was the mobile version, K6III+. But whether or not your mainboard's bios will support that chip is very questionable. Resources can be found at www.amdzone.com 's K6 forum to determine if your board will support it.

Actually, when the K6-III stopped production they became very desireable, and we were getting some nice $ for them on ebay! Not sure what they're going for these days. I know some vendors are charging some outrageous amounts for them.

I still have one K6III+-450 beauty that will do 616Mhz at 5.5*112 at stock voltage! The K6III+s are extremely overclockable. But it's sitting on a shelf.

But honestly, your upgrade dollars would be better spent on moving to the current level of architecture. You'd be amazed at the computing power your dollar can buy these days.