Asus P297L - What's the fastest chip I can use?

[RedFlag]

I know it's an LX chipset and officially it's 233-333 PII's. Bus speeds are 66, 75, and 83mhz. I'm just wondering if it would be possible to run a Celeron on it. Asus.com is currently down so I can't get any info from there. If someone's actually got it to run a Celeron please let me know!

Thanks

 

[JackG]

Hi Redflag,
I'm a proud owner of an Asus P2L97 rev. 1.05(I assume that's what you mean).
With the latest bios,1009, the board will support up to a Celeron 533 PPGA (NOT FC-PGA - there's a 533 of that type also) with slot 1 adapter. I'm running a cel 500 on a slotket on the 75 mhz bus @ 563. Completely stable with the retail Intel fan and heatsink. If I jump up to the next bus speed,83 mhz, it won't go into Windows. The chip might go there, but I don't think the RAM is dealing with it too well, not to mention the other older things on the bus. As cheap as they are, that might be a great upgrade for you.
I'm currently running a Voodoo3 2000 and 128MB ram for a not-too-shabby and really cheap gaming rig. Any other questions, just ask.
Jack

 

[JackG]

Here's the Asus link:
http://www.asus.com/products/techref/Cpu/cele533.html

 

[AndyHui]

Coppermine processor support has been added to the latest Beta BIOS, version 1010 Beta 003, available here. Keep trying if the link seems to fail.

BIOS 1010.003 also fixes problems such as broken ACPI support in version 1009.

You will need a slotket with adjustable voltage as the P2L97 does not support the lower voltages required by Coppermines. You will need to set the voltage manually to 1.80 volts otherwise the system will not boot.

 

[JackG]

Thanks for that info,Andy.

I wasn't able to find a readme file on the beta bios files for the support specifics...does one exist?


I'm assuming that I'd still be limited to the 66/75/83 bus speeds which are set by jumpers. In which case,having no 100fsb, a P3 would be limited to 66/75/83 X (multiplier). Would it be possible to throw in one of the "coppermine128" Celeron 766's, maybe running it at 862 mhz(75fsb x 11.5)?
Or...would it better to go with the P3, with lower clockspeed but better performance?
Do all slotkets support PPGA and FC-PGA? I'm using an older model for my 500 PPGA.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[JackG]

bump for help...

 

[AndyHui]

There is no file regarding the specifics of each beta BIOS release....a real problem I have with ASUS.

Even the Coppermine support is hearsay from the newsgroups, although I DO know that that broken ACPI support in 1009 was fixed in 1010.003.

Although it's nice to keep the old board, I would replace the P2L97. That way, you don't have the AGP power problems; later chipsets after the 440LX do not have the AGP bus arbitration problems; you also have the newer stuff like AGP4X, ATA66/100, 100+MHz FSB....

I held on to my P2L97 as long as I could, but I pretty much retired it about 3 months ago...