Can my 600x be upgraded?

[MurrayShafiroff]

Can my 600x (2645-3EU, 450 PIII), be upgraded to a PIII 750-850MHz? If so, do I just need a MMC2 CPU?

Thanks in advance

[pkiff]

The quick answer is yes, you can upgrade to a PIII 750-850, however those CPUs will run at 150MHz slower than top speed (i.e. at PIII 750 will run at 600MHz) when they are installed in your machine unless you do some other hardware modifications or are very lucky.

Your machine does not have "SpeedStep" support built into the motherboard, but all PIII 650-850 MMC-2 CPUs are SpeedStep CPUs. SpeedStep CPUs will normally run at their low-power speed when they are installed in a motherboard that does not support SpeedStep.

More details are available in The official 600 Upgrade and general information Topic sticky at the top of this forum.

Phil.

[u.mac]

The quick answer is yes, you can upgrade to a PIII 750-850, however those CPUs will run at 150MHz slower than top speed (i.e. at PIII 750 will run at 600MHz) when they are installed in your machine unless you do some other hardware modifications or are very lucky.

Under WinXP(!) there ist no need for a hot iron. You only have to use the right processor-driver... XP automatically select the wrong driver. Only issues with the right driver (with battery+powersupply installed): system hangs at power on, you've to press Fn+F2... system starts up with full mhz.

Without battery OR without powersupply system boots up with lower mhz... without Fn+F2.

It works like a real, complete SpeedStep-machine

-> XP+SP2: select the driver "processr.sys" BEFORE changing CPU <-
processr.sys will work with all 600x non-SpeedStep-mainboards with every CPU (450, 500 or above mhz - SpeedStep on non-SpeedStep).

If you want to have the highest mhz ever, you have to solder.

[pkiff]

You only have to use the right processor-driver [....] Only issues with the right driver (with battery+powersupply installed): system hangs at power on, you've to press Fn+F2... system starts up with full mhz.

Thanks for this clarification, u.mac. I must admit though that I'm not quite convinced that you've nailed the issue. Or maybe I've misunderstood what you say the result of changing the processor driver is.

Different people with supposedly non-speedstep 600X's have had a variety of different responses to CPU upgrades and I do not have the impression that they all can be made to run at full speed by changing the processor driver. In fact, my impression is that only rarely does this actually result in achieving full CPU speed. Do you have experience performing this upgrade on a range of 600X models?

Also, I did not know that most 600X's require Fn+F2 to reboot after a processor upgrade from a non-SpeedStep CPU to a SpeedStep one. Can you confirm that this is always the case?

Any additional info you provide would be valuable.

Thanks,

Phil.

[u.mac]

I've 3 non-SpeedStep-600x 500mhz (2645-4EG and -4EU) witch had 500mhz-CPUs and some orig. 650mhz machines. All 500mhz had installed XP before(!) CPU was changed and ran fine. After first CPU-upgrade the first machine ran fine - but only on lower mhz. I found no way to boost them up, so I went to the www and found this little trick. After the processr.sys installation the machine had full functions of SpeedStep (ok - with Fn+F2 after POST). So I changed at the other machines the driver too - before CPU-udate. Both machines ran fine with processr.sys and 500mhz-CPU (and without Fn+F2) under all circumstances. After CPU-upgrade they need also Fn+F2 after POST.

Maybe that there is no need for Fn+F2 with CPU-upgraded-600x when XP installation follows later, maybe XP installs the right driver - but I don't think so. After SP3 I had many trouble to boot up my modified machines. SP3 replaced the CPU-driver... and I had to press Fn+F2 10 times per secound while XP was loading and also before I newly changed the driver (don't recognize the drivername , but it wasn't processr.sys - processr.sys was not longer availible).

I don't know, what happens with Win2000. But under Win2000 runs the Intel SpeedStep Utiliy - so it may be, that there is nothing to do.

[pkiff]

Thanks for this valuable info, u.mac. Maybe you are right and all the issues are indeed related to the CPU driver. This would explain the different behaviour in Win2000 and XP SP3.

Based on your experiences, then, I think Murray has a choice. If he wants to run the new CPU at the lower speed all the time, then he can just install the CPU without modifying anything. If he wants to achieve full speed, however, and he is running XP (SP1 or SP2) then he will need to change the processor driver and he will also need to press Fn+F2 during POST to complete the boot each time. If he has XP SP3 then he should probably be discouraged from attempting to upgrade the CPU in his non-SpeedStep 600X. And if he is running Win2000 or Win98 then he should go ahead and try the upgrade and he may or may not be able to achieve full speed, possibly or possibly not with the SpeedStep applet applied.

Does that sound right to you?

Do you feel that your upgraded 600X machines run stable despite requiring the Fn+F2 key press during boot?

Under Win2000, I'm not sure that the SpeedStep applet will work for folks who are upgrading from a PIII 450 or 500. If I'm right about those machines, they may get something similar without ever using the SpeedStep applet because Win2000 has some built-in processor power-saving features that lower the speed when the CPU is not in use. In such cases, I think it is possible that Win2000 lowers the CPU multiplier or the FSB speed all by itself in order to reduce power usage.

Disclaimer: I don't actually have a non-SpeedStep 600X and I've never attempted any of these upgrades on one myself. All I've got to go on is what I've read here and in similar forums. So I would assume that u.mac's analysis of such machines is more accurate unless proven otherwise.

Phil.

[u.mac]

Does that sound right to you?

Yes

Do you feel that your upgraded 600X machines run stable despite requiring the Fn+F2 key press during boot?

Yes ...except ~5% failure after hibernate or sleep, specially when battery or powersupply was changed. In this cases system awakes with wrong mhz.

[whizkid]

Someone in my house has a non-SS 600X with a SS CPU, running XPSP2 IIRC. It requires Fn+F2 at POST and runs very reliably.

It's having an issue where it wakes up while closed, but that's a recent issue.