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PC Builder - Cases & Chips
Sure, sure. AMD and, to a lesser extent, other Intel cloners are price/performance leaders. Still, conservatives tend to run with the CPU market leader. But choosing Intel has its share of dangers.
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Intel's code-names for the various models of Pentium II series chips can get pretty confusing. The "Deschutes" was the company's professional series in 1999, offering compatibility with the faster 100 MHz bus speed of "BX" motherboards. This was supplanted by the Coppermine in 2000 and 2001. Less expensive and older is the Klamath line of "performance" PIIs, supporting 66MHz bus and best suited for use in motherboards based on the EX or LX chipset.
Meanwhile, the Celeron -- Intel's low-end CPU -- has gone through even more dramatic revisions. The original Celeron models had no onboard cache, a 66 MHz bus and conformed to the Slot 1 specification Intel was using at the time for its PII and PIII designs. Then, the company added 128K of onboard cache and began offering the chip in both Slot 1 and so-called "Socket 370" versions. Further complicating the issue, there were two different versions of the most popular Celeron of all: the 300 MHz model. The updated versions, with 128K of Level 1 cache, became known as the "300A" version. The Slot 1 version was phased out and the Socket 370 offerings were enhanced and the picture further confused when the so-called Coppermine Celeron was released in mid-2000. This revision, also known as the Celeron II, was based on the newer "Flip Chip" FC-PGA style socket, with different voltage requirements than its predecessors. It also added support for the "SIMD" multimedia instructions previously found only in the PIII. All Celerons prior to the 800 MHz version released in early 2001, however, were constrained by their reliance on a 66 MHz Front Side Bus. The 800 MHz part finally jumped to a 100 MHz bus speed, again in an FC-PGA form factor.
Many people are surprised at how much CPU prices vary from store to store. The dangers of buying from smaller shops offering "bargain" prices include the possibility of getting a remarked CPU and/or fake cache. Unscrupulous chip-remarkers sometimes put new lettering (often very convincingly) on a slower CPU and sell it as a genuine PII 300. Fake cache scammers stick a plastic chip inside a system and hope for the best. So, how can customers be sure they are getting the real thing? A boxed CPU (as opposed to an OEM-supplied processor) is the easiest insurance. However, there are other ways to verify the authenticity of your components.
For cache verification, you can use a program called cachchk6.zip, available at The Fake CACHE Page. Be sure to run it on your machine from a command prompt (not a DOS window).
There are ways of telling a genuine P300 from a remarked processor. The P300 has ECC on its L2 cache, lesser chips don't. (Intel sells ECC and Non-ECC versions of the P2-233 and P2-266.) A real PII 300 also works at 66MHz bus speed (66.6 *4.5 =300). You can check for ECC on L2 using a program from Germany's c't magazine called ctp2info.exe. (Windows-95-NT-Version) (Dos Version).
This program will identify a fake PII-300 because it had no ECC on the L2 cache. (Do we need to mention that this on-chip memory is not the same as the ECC setting you may find listed in your system's BIOS? Unless it specifies an ECC option for L2 cache, the ECC reference in your BIOS deals only with your system RAM.) Ctp2info will also notice if you are running on a non-standard bus speed.
Intel also has a program called CPUID, but it doesn't check for ECC memory. It will, however, provide the ID of your CPU which is helpful in detecting the processor type. For more info on how to tell a remarked CPU, see this page at pro-desk.com.
Overclocking
Some users overclock their 300 MHz Celeron or PII CPUs with a 4.5x multiplier and 75 or 83 MHz bus speed, while the lucky ones with CPU that can support higher speeds may be able to reach 4.5x100 (or, if living dangerously, at 4.5x105 or beyond). In the latter cases, you almost certainly need a motherboard that "steps down" the PCI/AGP clock to a 2/3 ratio, so that your AGP card is running as it should at 66MHz, instead of being pushed too far at 100 MHz. Graphics cards and hard drives can and will fail when overclocking goes too far.
What is the difference between a genuine Pentium II/300 and an overclocked 233 MHz CPU? Not much -- if you're lucky. Intel's manufacturing standards, according to most reports we've read, are high enough that most, if not all, PII/233 chips using the 0.35u manufacturing process are not that different from their higher-rated cousins. (Deschutes-class Pentium II and Mendocino Celeron models use a .25 micron fabrication process that makes them even better overclockers.) In other words, a good board, such as Abit BX6, can run a PII or Celeron at a higher bus multiplier and/or clock speed quite easily -- if the CPU is not one of the newer models that disables this capability. In fact, an overclocked Celeron 300A at about C$150 is almost identical in performance when over clocked to 450MHz to a real PII-450 that costs hundreds of dollars more. In some cases, the Celeron is even slightly faster, thanks to the fact that its internal cache memory runs at twice the speed of that of a Pentium II. However, as Tom Pabst describes at www.tomshardware.com, Intel has changed its manufacturing process to deliberately discourage chip deception (as aspiring conspiracy theorists, we can think of a few other reasons, too). Newer Pentium IIs and Celerons are "multiplier-protected." How can you tell whether a CPU can be overclocked? Look at the manufacturing date. Intel started disabling the multipliers on PII chips around the 34th week of 1997. Until then, all the Klamath-series chips supported 2.5x through 4.5x multipliers. The good news is, even multiplier locked Celerons (a 300 MHz model, for example is 4.5x66 MHz) can still be overclocked by boosting the bus clock speed: 4.5x83 MHz = 372 MHz. Many Celeron 300A owners can achieve 4.5 x 100 with adequate cooling.
It's also worth mentioning that even a "genuine" PII-300 is often unable to attain a stable 4x83. As users in newsgroups such as alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit and comp.sys.intel report, a board that runs fine at 4.5x75 may even be slower at 4x83 -- provided that they can find time between crashes to run the benchmarks. Desperate users resort to tuning memory settings to their slowest settings to get over-accelerated systems up and running. Our advice is: don't push too hard. Reliability often goes downhill above 338MHz on a 66MHz system bus pushed past 75MHz.
Also, note that, at 300MHz or more, a PII -- real or not -- generates a lot of heat. In a hot room, a PII-300 system can become unstable and even shut down or fail because of overheating. Some hot rodders open the case or equip it with extra fans or even refrigerated "Peltier" coolers (which many experts don't recommend because, as Peltiers cool, they tend to create condensation that can dampen the inside of your PC, potentially harming delicate circuitry). Our advice is skip the .35micron "Klamath" series of CPUs entirely and get a "Deschutes" (recent Pentium II) or "Mendecino" ("Celeron-A") series chip instead. These families, with their .25 micron process fabrications, run much cooler. The so-called "Coppermine" version of the Pentium III, released in late 1999, reduces the silicon even further -- to .18microns, allowing faster chips that run cooler than their bulkier predecessors ever could. In all cases, units with lower multipliers tend to be more overclockable than those with higher-clock/multiplier ratios. Thus, a P3/700 is more overclockable than a P3/800, just as a Celeron 300 is more overclockable than a Celeron 400.
A "Super7"-based board and CPU is another way to get the most bang for your buck, thanks to the price and performance of Intel competitors such as AMD, Cyrix or IDT. Indeed, AMD's latest K-2 is a very popular choice with value-conscious users and performance buffs. Be sure to get a board that reliably supports overclocked frequencies. www.tomshardware.com can provide a number of recommendations.
When it comes to Super 7 motherboards, Intel chipsets aren't the best choice. An Intel TX chipset, for example, is incapable of caching more then 64Meg of RAM. For comparison, the Sis 5591 chipset used in many non-Intel Socket 7 boards caches up to 256MB of RAM and supports added features of Cyrix and AMD CPUs.
AMD's K6-300 also runs cooler than Intel's 300 MHz chip. One case fan and one tiny CPU fan is enough to run a K6-300. For users who hate excessive noise, this is a bonus. Few users will notice any system performance difference between an Intel PII-300 and an AMD K6-300.
Heat Sinks! (yes it does)
http://www.freedombyfaith.com has some interesting test results of a variety of heat sink compounds. Notably, one of the compounds tested was worse than using nothing at all!
- No compound at all: 37.5C
- Radio Shack Compound: 33.0C
- Type 44 Heat Sink Compound: 32.0C
- RTV Silicone: 38.5C
In Case...
And, of course, all our computer-building efforts have to be put inside a case of some sort. We searched high and low for a great case. The best one we found was an Intel-approved model from LCH Resources. It has a motherboard panel that swings out by simply removing a single thumbscrew, much as some recent models from Dell do. The stylish case has sleep and reset buttons and a recessed floppy drive slot that gives the front panel an attractive Mac-like look. Dual ball-bearing fans and nicely finished metal edges (no cut fingers on this unit!) clinched this as our case of choice. Thanks to LCH for supplying us with this excellent case.
Refer to our PC Case Report for more information on products from LCH and other component suppliers.
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