Is Putting a Celeron 900 on a UDMA 33 Board Worth It?

[ssartel]

I have an Abit BH6 V1 with latest SS bios. Am currently running a Celeron 366@550MHz. I have been contemplating upgrading to a Celeron 900 but am wondering if it's really worth it with this board. When I upgraded originally from a Celeron 300A@450 to a 366@550, I didn't really see a very noticeable increase in the speed of my machine. I'm really wondering is it really worth it to upgrade to that fast a CPU when the MB only supports UDMA 33? It seems to me that that is really the biggest bottleneck at that speed. Would be curious if anyone agrees/disagrees. Would rather get some input before spending the $$$. Thanks for any comments.

[Pinky]

Welcome to the forums :)

The problem will be the swap file and loading data reasonably fast. It will be noticeably slower than with ATA66 or 100. Once the data is loaded, however, it should be alright... the more RAM the better, since you will have less swapping to the hard drive taking place.

Be absolutely sure the 900 will run on that board (I don't know off hand, but you said it would, assuming with that bios update).

[pappypete]

Yes, cele 900 will run on BH6 w/SS bios

[oldfart]

I have a BH6 1.01 SS BIOS with a Celeron 1 Gig, 112 FSB, 1.12 GHz (my kids PC). It really runs nice. I have a Promise ATA66 card in it. I got the card for $10. UDMA66/100 is not that big a deal unless you have a HD that can surpass ~ 33 MB/Sec STR.

[Inteleron]

check my sig, i just upgraded to a 900 from a 533..
pretty big difference runs well... ata 33 is loud and slow
but............ its not socket 7 days u know :)

[ssartel]

Thanks for the input, guys. Looks like for the $50 spent, it's worth it. I have 256 meg of RAM so that should cut down on the swap. I appreciate your comments and I'm finding this site to be a gold mine of information.

[Lyron]

I'm still happy with my Bh6 1.01 (SS). I've got a Cel 1.2 @ 1488 (1.55v) running in it... I think lots of ram is the key. I've got 512 of some cheap mwave.com stuff. udma 66+ is really not ALL the big of a deal... Sure, it would be nice to have, but when it comes down to it, ide is slow anyway. Just spend 10-20 bucks on a addon and save yourself from getting a new mobo...
"UDMA66/100 is not that big a deal unless you have a HD that can surpass ~ 33 MB/Sec"
Thats kinda the point, almost no IDE drives can do this.
Buffered reads can, but in the real world (track to track or random reads) you'll almost never get over 33MB a sec... Then again, I could be wrong :D

I'm sure you can find reviews with nice benchmarks and stuff like that...

Good luck with the 900 :)

[oldfart]

"UDMA66/100 is not that big a deal unless you have a HD that can surpass ~ 33 MB/Sec"
Thats kinda the point, almost no IDE drives can do this.
I wouldn't say that. My IBM 60GXP and Maxtor D740X can both do ~ 43 MB/Sec. ATA33 would slow them down. Most of the new 7200 RPM drives can easily surpass the ATA33 interface.

[Lyron]

Originally posted by oldfart

I wouldn't say that. My IBM 60GXP and Maxtor D740X can both do ~ 43 MB/Sec. ATA33 would slow them down. Most of the new 7200 RPM drives can easily surpass the ATA33 interface.

Are you sure it's not a cached read? I think sandra does this...
Take a look here http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/7200-roundup/

Look at the "Read Average Speed".
udma100 is a little bit faster than 33. But I don't think I'd buy a new mobo over it :)
Promise ATA66/100 card sounds good to me :D

[oldfart]

That Fuji drive they tested was kind of slow. If you look at the Sustained Linear Read Speed graph, you see it does ~ 38 MB/Sec on the fastest part of the drive. Better drives will do ~ 42 - 45. The new IBM 120GXP will do about 48. ATA33 will slow down any of these dives.

[Inteleron]

Dual Maxtor D740X ata133s w/ a promise ata133 raid controller in raid 0 .......yumm :p

[slim_lim]

Yeah, it's a pretty good upgrade... if you're going to play games. I upgraded from 300a to 900 on BH61.01 and while my CPU benchmark scores are about 3x of what they used to be, I can't see a huge difference in Windows performance. Long load times of apps like Photoshop seem more the fault of HDD than CPU.
I doubt you can do the whole upgrade for $50. You'll need the CPU ($45-50) boxed or OEM plus some sort of fan+HS + S/H. Mine was $55 shipped (boxed). Also you're going to need a slotket to fit the new FCPGA CPU into your mobo's Slot1. That's about $15 for a generic (some say they may be unrealiable). Or you can buy a brand name slotket and pay $25+... they can be hard to find too. I paid $22 for an MSI Master Slotket, and I think it was cheap, but I had the store locally and didn't have to pay S/H.
So unless you already have spare slotket and HSFU, I expect you'd pay $75 or more. Mine cost $77 total.

[ssartel]

I bought a Cel 900 boxed last night. I have a good Asus slotket I just recently bought. You're right they are getting hard to find and expensive. I bought a generic one earlier. It's working ok on the Cel 366 S370 I'm using now but wanted something with adjustable voltage. I may have to beef up the heat sink and fan I'm using on the 366 right now. It's an Antec rated to cool 1.2Ghz CPU's. It pushes 24 cfm at 5300 RPM so I would hope that would be sufficient.

[Yodums]

It is worth it.

If you don't think it is up to par just get an ATA100 card which you can put on the motherboard.

Just make sure you don't get a bad slotket eg, Generic.

Get something like an Abit Slotket !!!

And it'll be very resonable to upgrade.

Yodums

[batboy]

Rather than just getting an ATA66/100 controller.... why not get an ATA66/100 RAID controller? Oh yeah! I feel the need... the need for speed.