P3B-F question

I have a P3B-F rev 1.03 - currently I have the 1005 Bios, but will be flashing it up to 1006 soon.

I don't feel like doing the mod to the system to get a Tualitin in there....

I can't seem to find exactly which is the fastest CPU I can get in there, and which is the best CPU to drop in there to OC?

Right now I have 256mb PC100 SDRAM a Coppermine 5500@733, TI4200 G4 running at spec, IDE ATA133 card, Intel NIC 10/100, Audigy.

Basically, I want to know what is the fastest I can get this machine up to, with standard OC'ing methods - and I am not certain which CPU's are widely available that have good yields or a good track record of being stable.

I use to be a hard core OC'er - but life got in the way the last few years, so I need a crash course on what's best for my system these days.

Can't get a new system at the moment due to bills, but I would be up for going the CPU and if needed PC133 SDRAM. I just need some extra speed so I can play the newest games at decent FPS and resolution (hopefully I will be able to get Doom 3 to run on this PC when it comes out)

Any advice would be helpful,

Thanks

Bo

You could get a Slot-T adapter for $20 and a Tualeron for $40-50.

According to the compatibility list from Upgradeware it should work with your P3B-F.

Or you could get a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T + 1.4Ghz Tualeron for $159.95.

Well you could get a PIII 800 but it would cost you ~$80-100 (You could have a look at Ebay), but I wouldn't spend my money on that.

I would go for the first option (That's what I'm gonna do).

**EDIT** Welcome to the forums.

Is it possible to run a P3 1.4g on the P3B-F? I know I can crank the FB up to 133, but will it run stable using one of the Slot-T converters?

Should work fine, But why spend ~$200 on a CPU when you could buy a XP2000+, a new MOBO and some DDR for about the same price?
To me it's a waste of money spending ~$200 on an old SDRAM system...but that's just my opinion.

Yea - doing some research on prices - starting to look the nForce2 with a XP2000 or 2100 may be the way to go. A couple more bucks, but a ton more performance.

P3B-F is an awsome board, BUT

It is just going to the way side. I see you have an IDE controller card at least. As the P3B was only ata 33, ack. I ran up to a 800mhz on that board with 512mb of pc133 ram and an ATI 32meg card. But if you really want to get moving and get down and dirty with new software your gonna need to upgrade the thing. I went though the pricing and found out that I could get a new MB and CPU and Ram for roughly the same price it was going to cost me just to upgrade my P3B. I guess you have found this out also. The other big plus is that when you get a newer system you will be able to upgrade later on, where as your P3B will be maxed out.

Well that is just my take on it.

Slot 1 prices are going through the roof. A new 1ghz is almost 200.00 alone. 6 months ago you could have found a great deal like I did, but now you best look at upgrading. If you find a cheap CPU and stick with the P3B-F for a while don't flash to 1006 but get 1008 from the German site. That bios allows the MB to accept the fastest CPUs the board can handle.

you colud also use a modded ASUS S370-DL
ti fit a tualatin on your mobo...(i did it on a P3bf 1.03 and 1.02 slocket)

if you want i'll send you a 1008 modded bios with tualatin cpucode
(i use this bios on thst mobo)

try this on for size!
You can run 1.4 GHz in that ol' thang!

edit: Oh, I see someone already posted a link to the PowerLeap...

I have a P3B-F 1.03 as well (well... I gave it to my mom when I got the TUSL2-C). Flash it to 1006 and drop in the upgradeware slot-T and a Tualatin Celeron. My mom runs a Tualeron 1.2 at a conservative 1.44 (120FSB) in that one.

If you want an easy overclock get a 1.1A and run it at 1.463 (133FSB) so your PCI bus is in spec.

- JW

I've got the same P3B-F on my old computer. It's a P2 450 Slot 1 on a P3B-F rev 103. My kids are using it, and I want to upgrade it for them. I ordered a Slotkey Asus S370-L from e-bay today and i hope I didn't make a mistake.

I want to order a Intel Celeron (Pentium III based) 1.1AGHz 256K On-Die Cache FCPGA2 chip for this board and this adapter. i know after I flash the 1008 bois upgrade it will take up to a 1.1 P3,
but I'm concerned about voltage. The chip is a 1.475 v chip, and the lowest the s370-L will go is 1.5v. I didn't know about the Slot-t adapter until tonight, and it will go down to 1.3v. Will the S370-L work ok, or should I order a Slot-T and sell the S370-L on ebay?

If voltage is your only concern, you should be totally fine. I run my CPU at .50 over just as habbit for the extra stability. I am sure that you wont have any problems. Now as for the BIOS you are on your own, I know nothing about that upgrade.

Just to clear it up:

The Asus S370-L will not run a 1.1A (256k L2) without modifying the slocket (it will run a regular old 1.1 (128k L2)).

The Slot-T will work out of the box with either processor.

- JW

Ok, I got the Slot-T and the Celeron FC-PGA2 1.1 gig chip from Newegg and I just installed it in my old computer with the P3B-F mobo. I'm upgrading from a PII 450. The system ( as it is now)
Celeron 1.1 fc-pga2 256 l2 cache, 1.5v
slot-t

256 sdram ( I will move it up to 512 shortly)
Visiontek Nvidia MX440 64 mb
1 15 mb Maxtor main drive
1 8mb w/d backup drive
SB Live 5.1

The problem? I had a hardware error several times before it would let me go into windows. It said " Hardware Monitor found an error, enter power setup menu for details". The new chip is a 1.5v chip. I set the Slot-T adapter for 1.5V ( their default setting), and under the advanced menu of the bios, I checked and the v core was automatically set at 1.5. I looked at the Power menu, and under hardware monitor, 1.5v was in red. I've upgraded the bios on this board to the latest version, but it appeared to have a problem with the 1.5 v setting. To see what would happen, I disabeled it, exited the bios and re-booted the computer. It went right into windows and appeared fine.

I have it turned off now, should I be concerned about the v core setting? This kinda upgrade is new to me. I built a new P4 last March to keep from messing with the old system, but since I could upgrade it for under $70.00 and we could use the 2nd computer I figured why not?

Is it bad to disable the v core monitoring in hardware manager?
Should I change something in the advance menu? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I use the 1006 BIOS on my P3B-F and don't recall having any problems at 1.5v with a Celeron 1.2 and a Slot-T. Can you manually set the voltage to 1.50v in the BIOS?

- JW

I am currently running a 1 Ghz slot one coppermine P-III CPU in my P3B-F Mobo. I'm not sure of the BIOS version since the computer is at my office and I'm at home as I write this. But I do know it is a Beta BIOS I got from the German ASUS site. I've considered using a slot adapter kit to try and run a 1.4 Ghz Tulatin Celery chip but haven't made up my mind to give it a shot. The only way to OC the thing that I am aware of is to up the FSB (and correspondingly the voltage to the CPU). My biggest headache with the chip is cooling. Part of the problem is the case I'm using for the computer, but part is that it just seems to run hot anyway (a common problem for ASUS boards it would seem). I've thought about giving a 133 FSB a shot since the BX chipset should handle it. However, I'm afraid of trashing my HDD's by overclocking the PCI bus. I wish the board had a 1/4 divider on it.

CPanther2003 said:

Is it bad to disable the v core monitoring in hardware manager?
Should I change something in the advance menu? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about it too much, but you could try this BIOS, It's from a Russian site called ROM.by and it's supposed to support Tualatins. (If you want to read the site you can use Translate.Ru and translate the entire site).

Or you could try the 1008-4 Beta BIOS from this german site.

BTW: Welcome to the forums.

I could be worrying over nothing. I used the 1008 bios from the German site, and I think it was the one I was already using. It didn't change the warning in Hardware Manager. I couldn't get the russian one to work with the Asus utility.

I found the following web site regarding upgrades to the p2 and p3b mobo's:

http://n.ethz.ch/student/sroland/p2b_procupgrade_faq.html#tualatin_100

According to this site, it warns against using the Slot-T on mobo's that will go no lower than 1.8V, and gives out voltage regulator chip #s that only go down to 1.8, and those that go lower too. My chip #, HIP6020ACB wasn't listed.

I found another site:

http://www.intersil.com/design/parametric/productinfo.asp?pn=HIP6020ACB

This site seems to focus on my voltage regulator chip. I'm a beginner at stuff like this, but it looks like this chip accepts 1.5v.
Is the warning coming up because it's at the lowest setting? I've only ran it a few hours, but I've had no hang ups or boot problems since I disabeled the VCore monitoring in the bois.
The computer is doing very well. I did a minor overclock for testing purposes and it did well. I raised the vcore in the advanced menu up to 1.5.5 and then 1.60 and it did well ( still didn't get rid of the hardware warning) but I changed it back to 1.5. With Asus probe, the v core is running 1.50 to 1.504

Is there anything else I should check out, or just leave it alone?

This is the one I use: ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Slot_I/INTEL_Chipset/i440BX/P3B-F/1006f3.zip

After flashing if you still get the error msg try clearing the CMOS and setting everything up again.

- JW

I got the following e-mail from Upgradeware this morning regarding the voltage concern:

"Hi

Thank you for your e-mail.

For Asus motherboards (slot1 or socket 370), The lower voltage (Tualatin) will activate a warning in the hardware monitor part of the BIOS after upgrading.

Even though the latest BIOS has the Tualatin core, the original CPU table in the BIOS does not recognize the Tualatin processor so it displays the voltages in red.

It is quite safe and normal to set this to 'Ignore' monitoring of the CPU voltage as long as the motherboard correctly sets the CPU voltage to 1.50V.

Best regards,

Tech Support "

I also got the following response from a similar post I had over at the Motherboards.org forum:

"After checking out all of your info, I have a few comments.

The HIP 6020ACB Voltage Regulator chip is just an upgraded version of the HIP 6019 and is more than capable of suppling the 1.5V needed.

The hardware monitor in the BIOS uses the CPUID of the processor to determine if the core voltage is correct by looking up the CPU in a table and comparing the table value with the VIDx settings. Since the table of values is a part of the BIOS, the BIOS isn't id-ing the CPU properly and thinks the Vcore is wrong. The easiest fix is what you have already done... Turn off the hardware monitor.

And no, the regulator chip nor the power transistors associated with it are not going to "go up in smoke." The regulator has over-current as well as over-voltage protection and will automatically shut itself as well as the system down if that happens.

So, leave everything as you have them and enjoy

Dell"

So, in a nutshell it's ok. I just wanted to post all of this in case anyone else has a similar problem.

I ran it all weekend and it did great. I even overcloced it a little and had no problems.