PII 400 to PIII 850

[Guest]

Need help identifying the right path. I'm running an IBM Intellistation M Pro (6889-14U) with Dual PII-400's. I want to upgrade to PIII-850's however I'm not sure how to correctly identify wether or not I need a converter board or not. Here's the information I can provide:

1. Manual say Power Supply provides 3.3-volt power for the Pentium II or Pentium III processors.

2. Has voltage regulator to convert 5.0V by power supply to core voltage required by microprocessor.

3. Last BIOS update(s) (5/12/2000) states the below:

NUKT/NUJT37A
Additional processor microcode updates
Add Pentium III 600MHz support

NUKT/NUJT43A:
Update CPU patch file
Support for addtional processor speed ratio bits

IBM says this box has only been testing under a Pentium III 600Mhz with 512k Cache, but won't comment beyond that. However the last line of the BIOS update states support for additional processor speed ratio bits, which leads me to believe that I can just pop in the Pentium III 850. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jay Bivens

 

[Crashman]

You can probably upgrade to a faster PIII by using an adapter card (slotket) with onboard voltage control.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

The PIII's with 512kb cache are Katmai processors, running at 2.05V, whereas your PII 400's run at 2.0V, so it would make sense that those were supported. The PIII 850's would be Coppermine chips, 256kb cache, running at 1.65V. So you could check with IBM and try and figure out what voltage range your mobo supports. Otherwise, as crashman said, the slotket with a voltage regulator is your best bet. If anyone could please post slotket manufacturers with the voltage conversion feature, please post!! I know PowerLeap has one that does, I don't think IWill's converts voltages and I don't think Abit's does either.