VOGONS


First post, by Alexraptor

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I have an old Compaq Deskpro that i got from my dad, which i recently fitted out with a pair of Voodoo2, and I feel like it needs a little more juice in the CPU department. The system has a proprietary 440BX chipset motherboard, with a 450Mhz Pentium III Katmai, with a 100mhz FSB.

What are my options? Can I just upgrade to any Slot 1 coppermine P3 with matching FSB?

Reply 1 of 11, by dionb

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Depends which Deskpro and proprietary 440BX motherboard. More info needed.

Reply 2 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Pentium III @650mhz with 100mhz bus speed
256mb RAM
Compact Flash card with Adapter.
Win98se
Win2000

Reply 3 of 11, by Tetrium

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Alexraptor wrote on 2025-02-06, 18:33:

I have an old Compaq Deskpro that i got from my dad, which i recently fitted out with a pair of Voodoo2, and I feel like it needs a little more juice in the CPU department. The system has a proprietary 440BX chipset motherboard, with a 450Mhz Pentium III Katmai, with a 100mhz FSB.

What are my options? Can I just upgrade to any Slot 1 coppermine P3 with matching FSB?

Probably not.

Katmai's will probably work, these went up to 600MHz.
Not all Katmai's may work right away, depending on the BIOS or it may work but won't display CPU settings correctly. Even if the board will post witha higher clocked Katmai, there's always the chance your board won't properly support it in the long run.
Coppermine compatibility may be a bit of a crapshoot and can go various ways, depending on how far you're willing to go in the modding department.

As been mentioned before, you're gonna need more info first especially the motherboard model number and revision (revisions usually matter a lot when it comes to slot 1 as tech moved so quickly in the Slot-1 era).

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention, the rest of the hardware may or may not work with the faster CPU you may be wanting. Think Slot-1 CPU cooler and the big OEM cases of the time weren't exactly refrigerator class cooling devices, but I reckon you probably already know (some of) the basics regarding this.

Having said this, it should be relatively safe to try (within reason of course, I probably wouldn't want to try something like a 1GHz Coppermine in an LX board right away or something).
I can't remember ever having experienced catastrophic hardware failure because I tried a Coppermine in a board that didn't properly support it.
Iirc usually the system would simply not POST.

(also, dang almost replied instead of edited, woops)

Last edited by Tetrium on 2025-02-06, 20:33. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 4 of 11, by Paadam

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Had mseveral types of 440BX deskpros recently and most of them worked well with CuMines (to my surprise), that is Slot 1 versions which meant they already had correct VRM's etc.
If you have one that does not have VRM capable providing less than 1.8v then just use a slocket and any s370 PIII and set the voltage to 1.8v, it will work without issues.

Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)

Reply 5 of 11, by Alexraptor

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Motherboard part number seems to be: 118053-001, Rev.AW

Heatsink on the katmai is massive, and definitely not standard issue.

Reply 6 of 11, by chinny22

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Looks like you can go up to a 600MHz Katmai, it's a common limit for slot 1 boards.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/compaq … skpro-ep-3-dimm

Quick google of Prosignia 300 and AP200 which apparently used this motherboard doesn't bring up much re faster CPU's either.
Good news is my Slot 1 maxes out with the same CPU and I find it's enough for Win9x, Games that want something faster work in XP anyway.

Reply 7 of 11, by dionb

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Here's the service manual for that Deskpro:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/30262/Compa … ?page=29#manual

It describes multiple system boards, the 118053-001 is the "PII/PIII System board, three-DIMM model (440BX) - (PCA=010233-101) Shipped on all PII and PIII units after 2/23/99)"

There are CPUs up to well in the Coppermine range described in the manual, but none are associated with this board, the fastest one with 010233-101 is P3-600 (Katmai).

But...

Take a look at this topic:
Compaq EP650 with a Pentium III 700 MHz?

It refers to a "Compaq 041Ch" motherboard. According to this that corresponds to 118053-001. So maybe it might work. But it's also possible multiple revisions/part numbers identify as 041Ch (3-DIMM BX board) and yours doesn't.

I'd just try - but no guarantees.

Reply 8 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Okay,
500mhz Pentium III is good enough.
I would put my MONEY in 256mb of RAM and a Compact Flash card for Sure.
I would do this First before trying to upgrade the CPU.

Reply 9 of 11, by Alexraptor

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2025-02-06, 23:34:
Okay, 500mhz Pentium III is good enough. I would put my MONEY in 256mb of RAM and a Compact Flash card for Sure. I would do this […]
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Okay,
500mhz Pentium III is good enough.
I would put my MONEY in 256mb of RAM and a Compact Flash card for Sure.
I would do this First before trying to upgrade the CPU.

I actually already have an old 60gbKingston SSD in the system, with an startech IDE adapter, and the system already had 256mb when i got it. 😀

Reply 10 of 11, by Alexraptor

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I've been looking a bit at upgrading the primary AGP card(currently A Matrox G200) for D3D titles, but I'm unsure of what this system can handle.

I know anything that needs a molex is out of the question, since the proprietary 200w Compaq PSU has a weak 6A 12v rail, but it's supposed to be able to supply 22A on the 5v rail and 14 on the 3.3. What are my options? Is any kind of GeForce4 feasible? or should I be looking at something more low powered like a GeForce2 Ti?

Reply 11 of 11, by chinny22

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I'd say something like a GF2 MX is about the perfect balance of neither the CPU or GPU been bottlenecked by each other
but something like a GF4 Ti extra performance might be nice if running at higher resolutions or if you want to enable things like AA.