Bringing the Pentium-M to the desktop

Guys, I have some good news to report! I just fitted a CNPS9500 to my dothan, and my temps are 33 idle and 41 load under prime. I can probably push it past the 2.7ghz mark with this, though I'm not going to because I'm already at 1.5375v in bios (1.50v actual). Still, this means that I don't have to back my clock down 70mhz in summer anymore, and it doesn't spontaneously overheat.

The cooler:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article267-page1.html

The mod is simple. You must take pliers and bend the clip to a sharper angle as to give proper pressure. A warning, though, there is a bit of trial and error, and if you bend the clip too much, you risk crushing your core. It takes a bit of patience to get it just right, but trust me the results are worth it.

Thats quite interesting, I was doing some video encoding on mine last week, and between 1.53v and 1.55v actual, and on a hot day, temps were around the 47-48 mark. didn't miss a beat at 2712mhz. With that cooler You could easily run it at 1.55-1.6v no probs.
based on forum surfing for overclock results, they do between 2.6 and 2.8 stable.

My 'old' Dothan (the one from my own project as linked in the first post) is still humming happily next to my main rig, it's clocked at 2.0Ghz atm with default vcore, and the only thing cooling it is the default Asus heatsink without the fan, instead, ive mounted a low-noise Zalman 120mm fan above it using tiewraps, the system is whisper-silent and still very fast.

The windows XP install on it is the original one i did on June 6th 2005 after i got all the parts for my rig together..oh the nostalgia

Sjaak said:

My 'old' Dothan (the one from my own project as linked in the first post) is still humming happily next to my main rig, it's clocked at 2.0Ghz atm with default vcore, and the only thing cooling it is the default Asus heatsink without the fan, instead, ive mounted a low-noise Zalman 120mm fan above it using tiewraps, the system is whisper-silent and still very fast.

The windows XP install on it is the original one i did on June 6th 2005 after i got all the parts for my rig together..oh the nostalgia

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Mines still my main rig, still running as in sig, and at 1.6v i figured it would start to degrade or die, but its fine. Only reason I run 1.600 is because any other voltage even at stock clocks it doesnt boot lol.

Whats your dothan doing now?

Ok, another update from me. I just swapped my processor out for a new 740 (old one died inexplicably), and it's sitting prime stable at 2730mhz (13x210) w/1.475v (dips to 1.43v under prime). Idle temp is about 38 C, going up to 51C under prime burn. I have gotten this up to [email protected], but the temps make the processor get flaky.

For games, this thing is roughly equivalent to an A64@3ghz

Here's proof positive that an AGP rig still has a bit of life left in it.

Update: prime errored out after 12h @ 2730mhz. Dropping the speed to 2720.

For games, this thing is roughly equivalent to an A64@3ghz

Here's proof positive that an AGP rig still has a bit of life left in it.

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There's gonna be even more life in it soon, as ATI are releasing a Radeon 3850 for AGP, I will seriously consider getting one if some benchmarks show it being worthwhile over my current 7800gs.
I wouldn't have believed it 4 years ago that I would still be using the same mobo that had my P4 2.6C in.
BTW 3line, I seriously doubt temps are causing Your instability probs, more likely Your reaching the limit of the cpu core at the voltage You have it set at. Mine doesn't really get much hotter even at 1.6v, I can run benchmarks at over 2.8ghz but stability suffers. 2.72 sounds about right. Give it a bit more voltage, it won't hurt it. Make sure Your ram isn't the stability cause, I rma'd my old Corsair CH5 based ram, and they replaced it with the Promos stuff, system is heaps more stable and ram overclocks heaps better too.

imperiousleader said:

There's gonna be even more life in it soon, as ATI are releasing a Radeon 3850 for AGP, I will seriously consider getting one if some benchmarks show it being worthwhile over my current 7800gs.
I wouldn't have believed it 4 years ago that I would still be using the same mobo that had my P4 2.6C in.
BTW 3line, I seriously doubt temps are causing Your instability probs, more likely Your reaching the limit of the cpu core at the voltage You have it set at. Mine doesn't really get much hotter even at 1.6v, I can run benchmarks at over 2.8ghz but stability suffers. 2.72 sounds about right. Give it a bit more voltage, it won't hurt it. Make sure Your ram isn't the stability cause, I rma'd my old Corsair CH5 based ram, and they replaced it with the Promos stuff, system is heaps more stable and ram overclocks heaps better too.

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Thanks for the tip, man. This computer actually kept erroring out of prime at lower speeds like 2.7 and even 2.68--at 18 hours, no less. That in itself might have been tolerable were it not for the random graphical glitches I was getting in games.

I actually had this thing set on memory acceleration mode, which might have been causing the problem, since I have 4 sticks of ram. Running CR1 + 2-2-2-5 @ >200fsb AND with MAM enabled might have just been too much for the poor memory controller.

So right now I got it priming at 2.77ghz @ 1.55v. The thing will boot into windows and run tests stably at higher speeds (Max 2.82 @ 1.6v), but I've had a problem with random CMOS clearing upon restart with speeds of >2.8ghz.

Performance has suffered somewhat. My memory score @2.77 (213) is about as much as I was getting @2.66 (205), and it's still just under my scores w/two sticks on turbo @ 2.6 (200). My performance I guess would be only marginally higher than before, all things considered. MAM does go a long way, but the price is well worth paying for a stable system.

As an added bonus, dropping MAM seems to have lowered my temps a couple of degrees.

I just replaced the 4x512 with 2 sticks of 1024mb ddr500. Runs loose timings, and my Sandra scores still suck, but PAT's 10% boost to overall system performance can't be beat.

And now I'm up to 2760mhz @ 1.5625v

Question

Hi have a small problem with an old laptop that I am trying to fix up, this laptop a Compaq EVO n1050v has had a faster CPU installed into it (2,2 from a 1.8), however because of the speed steep utility that is installed in windows the speed never rises above 1.1 GHZ even when Crystal CPU and other applications can read the top speed of the chip.

I have tried changing the power settings however this has no effect also even when the computer is in full use the CPU is still being throttled, only randomly does the CPU kick into full power, and no application has an effect on the speed step.

I was wanting to know if there was any way that I could disable speed step in the registry or any other way, I also heard of people using crystal CPU in order to stop dual core systems from stepping down however this involves rewriting part of the OS on the system, the API to the kernel which is something I don’t know how to do.

I am an experienced computer user however I simply do not have the time to continue researching the problem much further than I have. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well, after some serious crashes in which I think I got my MBR corrupted, I've cannibalized parts of this Dothan rig to use in a semi-hand-me-down dual opteron. As of now, my Pentium M is in mothballs, though one day it will live again.

3line said:

Well, after some serious crashes in which I think I got my MBR corrupted, I've cannibalized parts of this Dothan rig to use in a semi-hand-me-down dual opteron. As of now, my Pentium M is in mothballs, though one day it will live again.

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Mine's going even stronger now, as I just added a Radeon HD3850 AGP to it, check out the scores in sig.
Sad news about Yours 3line, RIP.

imperiousleader said:

Mine's going even stronger now, as I just added a Radeon HD3850 AGP to it, check out the scores in sig.
Sad news about Yours 3line, RIP.

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It's going to be resurrected once I got some time and money in the summer. The hardware seems to be fine. Maybe this time around I'll try to build it as an ultra-silent rig.

Those are damn fine scores, btw.

would be really nice if they made something like this for the newer lappy procs. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

jokers_greg said:

would be really nice if they made something like this for the newer lappy procs. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

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would be really hard to do that with the LGA775 socket. if you look there are motherboards with socket M and socket P for mobile cpus, they are in the $200 range. www.logicsupply.com

Hi,

To post a new experience, I recently jubilated my old Tualatin rig and swapped it with a dirt cheap AOPEN s661fxm-fsn w/2 GB (50 euro through eBAY), dropped in a sonoma pentium 745A w/a XP-90 P4 cooler and cannibalized the rest of hardware from the old rig (including my x800XT). All together it was an under 90 bucks investment, and the result is a quite fast system running in a day by day basis at 2.61Ghz (18*145) even if it can do 2.66Ghz but AGP is not that stable then.

The tricks to this success (for a mobo that is not that much overclockable as this one) are a very good cooling (the xp-90 does a great job), the wire trick (my CPU runs at 1.66v), a good memory (uccc based) ..specially since this board does not support dual channel, which can be overclocked so that processor does not become memory starved, and choosing a sonoma-base processor. (aka c0 stepping).

The only drawback of this setup is the lack of dual channel support, however running the memory as PC3900 (485 DDR) w/CAS 2.5 kind of compensates a bit...

Sjaak said:

Mine's still humming at 2.6 after a year and a half..i dont see it getting replaced let alone sold on for a looong time

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After being my main gaming rig for a little under 2 years I upgraded to a Core 2 Duo (and an I7 soon after that) and the P-M was eventually donated to a family member for office use where it lasted another 4 years before it was given back to me circa 2011. I couldn't bear throwing it out at the time so it sat in the attic for a few more years until quite recently when I chucked it away with the scrap.

Finest CPU I ever got my hands on, that little 730 Pentium-M!

ah yes. brings back alot of good memories Sjaak. i ran a p4c800e dlx with the 479 adapter and a handfull of dothan cpus.. that was a sweet setup. then socket 775 came out and the e6600 craze began followed by quadcores hahaha those were the days. i sold most of the p4c rig off at the same time and ended up giving away the rest of the pentium m procs in another. those were some fun times.

I've owned the same rig for nine years now, only changes have been the addition of SSD's and 2 VGA upgrades in all that time.. OC'ing as a hobby used to be different..