Upgrading P3B-F processor with slotket?

[biglaker]

Saw an article at Anandtech on upgrading the Asus P2 and P3 motherboards using something called a slotket. I was considering upgrading my son's 450 Mhz pentium 3 that he has on an Asus P3B-F. Does anyone know where you can buy these slotket and processor combinations? I'm not sure what I need to know about his machine so hopefully whoever sells them could provide some tech support on it.
Has anyone tried this?
What kind of success?
Was it worth it?
Would it be better to just get a faster slot 1 processor. They seem expensive.
Am I limited to slotket/processor combinations of 100 Mhz because I've seen a few on Ebay that were 133 Mhz?
Any help that could be provided would be appreciated especially about sources for buying them. Thanks, Biglaker

[rockinmale]

Hi biglaker!

Okay, i have been doing some research on your request. I have taken a look at your motherboard manual. The highest processor you can put into that mb is an 850mhz. That is of course if you flash your bios to the most current version. You wouldnt need to purchase a slotket. Plus i also wanted to add that your mb supports a 133mhz front side bus as long as you have pc-133 memory. Otherwise it will default to pc-100.

Let's see the prices i came up with on www.pricewatch.com.

You have two options:
850mhz/100mhz slot 1 is going for $130 retail box which includes the cpu heatsink and fan.
800mhz/133mhz slot 1 is going for $116 Retail box

Here's a link to the site......that's selling the processor for that price. www.googlegear.com.

Plus here's a link to asus for your bios update and manual. Http://www.asus.com

As for whether or not its worth it? If your just going to balance your checkbook it certainly isnt worth it. If you plan on playing games on it you would notice a improvement. It's basically what you want it to do......:D

Hope the info helps.......Let me know what happens.....

Have a nice day:)
rockinmale:cool:

[biglaker]

Thanks Rockinmale,
Your are very kind to do that research for me. I was somewhat aware that I could buy a replacement Pentium III processor but I sort of got the impression that the motherboard could be fooled into allowing a 133 Mhz processor if it were loaded onto a slotket. Anyway, the motherboard manual that I got with my P3B-F had no discussion of anything beyond 100 Mhz FSB. I guess that I will need to look on the Asus link to see if a later version of the manual provided more possibilities. I looked all over the board as best I could without disconnecting anything for the Rev level of the board because I believe that sometimes earlier versions of boards have less capability than others.
Not sure what I'm going to do yet. I just had to replace my son's CDrom today as he was having trouble with it- it was making a clicking noise and sometimes locking up his machine. The $130 replacement price for his processor is about what I paid for an Anthlon XP in December. Of course, buying the Pentium 3 would not require new memory/case/etc. We're not going to rush into this until we're convinced we've got the best choice. Thanks again for your help. Biglaker :cool:

[frank5]

I have to disagree with rockinmale in that the board does not support a 133MHz bus since the agp bus is not proportional to the fsb\pci bus ratio selections in the BIOS. In other words, as you go up on the fsb, the agp bus keeps going up and will cause video freezes and lockups as you reach an agp bus of >75 for most video cards.
This MB will overclock well using 100MHz cpu's but if your starting at an fsb of 133, your agp bus is 2/3 of this or about 90, even if you choose the 133\33 (fsb\pci) setting. You probably could use a pci video card and run stable at this setting, but most agp video cards will become unstable.
Also, check out powerleap.com. They have new slotket\cpu combo's all the way up to 1.2 GHz celeron which is compatible with this board. A little pricey though. Good luck!

[biglaker]

Thanks Frank5,
I did download the latest manual and although it did provide a few more possibilities @100 Mhz, there was no mention of the use of 133 Mhz. I'm really not into overclocking. I will take a look at the Powerleap but if it appears to get too expensive, maybe I'd just as soon replace the M/B before putting too much into a processor that I will later replace anyway. Thanks again
Biglaker