General Celeron information.

[blockers]

Hi.
I have a compaq machine (sadly) it has a 600mhz celeron in and i was considering getting an celeron motherboard and having a go at overclocking it.

core:
600/128/66/1.5v (i guess this is 600mhz/128L2 cache/66fsb/1.5vcore)
Q030A3454-0314 SL45U

Can anyone tell me what the second bit means?

Also, is it true that coppermine celerons are pretty much a P3 with half the cache disabled? if so, is it possible to enable this cache?

Finally - can anyone recommend celeron boards, for 600mhz ones.

Thanks very much
Will

[joshwa]

no it's not possible to enable the rest of the cache - i don't think intel even put it in there. (i've never heard this said before). but yes they are basically P3 chips, but with a smaller cache and they run at a lower FSB - you should fairly easily be able to overclock your FSB to 100mhz, and run the CPU at 9x 100 giving 900mhz. i did this with a celeron633 to run it at 950mhz. I needed much more voltage though and better cooling - but you don't specifically need a "celeron" motherboard - you just need a P3/Celeron motherboard (socket370) - such as any ABIT - they always tended to have all the needed overclocking options such as FSB and voltage settings. The BX chipset always seemed the best... you may have to look on ebay to find one though...

[Rave]

The second bit is just the stepping code AFAIK. I never heard of the cache being enabled. As for the board, you'd need one capable of taking FCPGA processors, the original S370 Celerons had a slightly different pin specification called PPGA (although boards that don't support FCPGA are probably pretty rare).

Rich :¬)

[blockers]

Thanks for the replies guys, and clearing that up.
I did read something about FCPGA and PPGA or whatever it is, but didnt fully understand something about using silcone isntead of whatever.....:S Well thats what i thought.

Ill see what i can find board wise.

Will

[cm_uk]

celeron's are pentium 3's that didnt pass certain tests...so they just manufatured em that way and then sold em as 'celeron' chips....well thats how the were first invented lol!so u got basically a p3 that doesnt run how it should lol.

[malfunction]

cm_uk - Cele's aren't just P3s that didn't pass certain tests - they may or may not be coppermine dies with failed L2 cache but because of supply and demand they are more likely made to order chips.

Blockers - Are you sure that the code is SL45U?

processorfinder.intel.com reckons it's a P3 but the 128/66 part is obviously saying it's a celeron (and I'm sure it says celeron on the chip too!)

SL46U is a Cele 600... Says it's CB0 stepping so it's fairly old and might not clock that well (there were two more steppings for the coppermine P3 / cele - CC0 and CD0). But go for 900MHz - you never know!

Also - blockers - they don't just have less L2 cache and a lower FSB - the cache also has higher latencies and is only 2 way associative instead of 4 way IIRC (or was it 4 instead of 8?) which means that it's a little bit worse still...

[pimp]
I have a couple of socket 370 P3 800s here...
[/pimp]