Celeron D

[Jadende]

Hey guys, I have a Celeron D 2.66ghz processor, you know which one im talking about. Anyway, I was wondering if I can upgrade the processor? I know there is the Celeron D 2.8ghz processor I believe it is, but I was wondering If it would be possible to upgrade to a pentium 4? My friend keeps sayin that any processor with the same ammount of pins (and pin configuration) will work. I know this cant be possible. I know enogh about computers, but not about processors. Please enlighten me.

[Doorbasher]

The Celeron Ds all have the same 533MHz bus speed, only the multipliers are different. Since the multipliers on Intel CPUs are generally hard-wired, you don't really have to worry about if the specific multiplier is listed in the manual. (Example: I have a Supermicro P6DBE board, revision 3. It's a dual slot 1 440BX job, and the manual mentions multipliers up to 6x. But plenty of people have run 1GHz P3s on these boards. The 1 GHz chips run a 10x multiplier, but since for normal, non-engineering sample chips there is no way to change it, everything works fine.)

BTW, there are Celeron Ds even faster than 2.80, namely the 2.93 and 3.06. Then again, with any of these you will likely see a performance gain of a few percent at most, so think carefully before you open your wallet. You could try for a P4, which will get you more cache and a decent boost at the same clock speed. If your motherboard and RAM will take 800MHz FSB CPUs, than you're pretty much ready for anything. If you're capped at 533, you might look for a 3.06 Northwood. If you can't find one, some 2.80 Prescotts have a 533 MHz bus, but since the Prescotts are less efficient than Northwoords in terms of IPC (Instructions Per Clock) you'd really be better off with the 3.06 Northwood.