Helping "fill-out" my motherboard

[Abra_Volta]

I am posting this here as I'm not quite for sure which forum would be best for it (kinda new here).

I was fiddling around with my wife's computer and got sick and tired of it being soo slow.

For reference, her system:

Tyan Trinity 400 (S1854) Motherboard Motherboard (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/trinity400.html)
Intel P-III 450Mhz
512 MB PC133 SDRAM (currently running at 100Mhz)
8.4GB 5400RPM UDMA/33 Hard-drive
Hercules 3D Prophet II MX (Geforce2 GTS architecture)
Creative Soundblaster Live!
Netgear FA310TX Fast Ethernet PCI


Now, what I would like to do is upgrade it as much as the motherboard can handle as I think it would be cheaper for me in the long run.

First Step: Upgrade processor. After reading the tech notes and everything for this motherboard I believe I can use a P-III 1Ghz FCPGA Coppermine Socket 370. I just don't know for sure. My board revision says 99PONA with the little white box saying 'M'.

Second Step: Upgrade RAM. The motherboard specs say I can have 768MB of PC133. There are already 2 sticks of 256MB PC133 in there. I would like to get the same kind of stick for the 3rd slot, but I cannot find anything on it. This is what the sticks say:

SimpleTech 256MB PC133
98000-00167-001
C000094

I cannot find out anything about these sticks. I thought I had purchased them at a Best Buy, but I have forgotten for sure. Plus, I no longer had the packaging I had bought them in. If anyone can help me find these, it would be a great help.

Third Step: Upgrade hard drive to an UDMA/66. This shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

The video card, sound card, and network card can all stay the same. Latest drivers have been downloaded and being used so that shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Though, it seems I am having a hard time finding out whether or not the video card is using the 4x AGP mode. Any help here would be nice.

So, basically, there are 3 questions I need help answering:

1) Can I truly use a P-III 1Ghz Coppermine processor?

2) What and where is my kind of RAM?

3) Is the AGP card using 4x or not?

Thanks for your time in reading this. As always, any help is greatly appreciated.

[Namagomi]

Yes. Geforce2's ran in 4x AGP
Sorry, that's all I know for sure =/

you might wanna check the Tyan site to find out about the CPU.
www.tyan.com


edit - whaaaaaaaat? a slot 1 and a socket 370? what is the point of that? :eh?:

[Abra_Volta]

Upgradability, which is what I am doing.

And if you didn't notice, I have a hyperlink at the end of my motherboard description taking you straight to the info for it.

One thing does perplex me though. On the spec sheet for the board it says this:

Supports up to two Intel® Pentium® III, Intel® II ** or Intel® Celeron processors

Does anyone know for sure whether or not you can run a Slot 1 AND a Socket 370 together?

[NO LIFE]

I wouldnt do dual anything if I were you. I would get a new mobo and cpu because your only gonna hurt youself by staying with old P3 achitecture. Go for a AMD Athlon XP 1600+ with a cheap mobo since you dont plan to overclock. Go to www.pricewatch.com/ and you can get a combo for under 90 bucks. Then just use the existing RAM. That should help a lot. Also consider a HD reformat and make sure your wife defrag often.

Hope I helped!

EDIT: I forgot to mention if you are running Win98 as the OS it doesnt like anything above 512mb of RAM. For that system 512 will work better. Also if you do get a new mobo maybe you should consider just getting a 256mb stick of pc2100 DDR. It will be faster than 512mb pc133. Try www.pcboost.com/ for some cheap RAM.

[cack01]

1. yes the 1ghz coppermine will work.
2. You can buy any kind of PC-133 SDRAM. There is nothing wrong with mixing different companies.
3. Assuming you have the AGP verison of the card, and the bios is set to run the AGP at 4x, then your card is running at 4x AGP.

As for running the board as a dual, I am kinda dumb founded.

First it says this: Tyan Trinity 400 is a quality, high performance single processor system platform.

Then says this: Supports up to two Intel® Pentium® III, Intel® II **
or Intel® Celeron processors.

So I don't know for sure. If you pull up some reviews of the board, then I'm sure that should clear things up. One thing you may want to take note on is this little fine print on the specs page: ** Does not support older Slot 1 Pentium II's with 2.8V core voltage, does not support cooling fan included with Socket 370 boxed Intel processors.

So your going to need to get a thrid party HSF it looks like.

EDIT: I looked through some reviews, and the board can not run in dual operation. Of course I should have known this in the begining since slot 1 and FCPGA are different arcitectures. Plus they usually differ in speed, cache, and FSB.