Finally, socket 479 Pentium-Ms on socket 478s!

[Kazuo]

ASUS is apparently set to release an adapter for some of their socket 478 boards (and perhaps others!) that will allow end-users to use both Banias and Dothan Pentium-Ms and Celeron-Ms, but not the low-voltage or ultra-low-voltage ones. This is amazing news, since they show it working on a P4P800-VM which should be well below $100. With this adapter, we may see P-M on the desktop for about $100/board as opposed to the roughly $250 necessary today. The adapter comes with a heatsink with 70mm fan rated at 3000rpm.
Info on the ASUS CT-479 adapter can be found at:
Hardware.fr
techPowerUp! (and a link to X86-Secret from there)
And many other sites you can find on Google.

Edit: This adapter discredits this Anandtech article page. Sorry, Anand! ASUS and their wacky plots to use things in ways they shouldn't be able to. I love ASUS.

 

[DrMrLordX]

We've known that Pentium Ms use the same bus as P4s for some time . . . just not the same socket. Enter the adapter to fix everything. Well, almost everything?

What kind of aftermarket coolers will you be able to use with this adapter? Are you restricted to using the included fan/heatsink?

Also, do you need to do any BIOS-flashing to get this to work?

 

[Kazuo]

Well, Anand's article claimed that the mobile chips were different enough that normal chipsets couldn't work, so that is why this is big news (and very good news at that).

As for coolers, they haven't released that info as far as I've seen, but I'd guess the deal is a lot like with PowerLeaps where the socket is raised so that off-the-shelf coolers are difficult to use.

BIOS-flashing also has not been addressed (we don't even know which boards specifically this will work on yet, so hang tight!) One site claims that ASUS will release the info on it pretty soon. Still, I'm looking forward to it, since it'll be a cold day in hell before I go to Prescott.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I can certainly understand your hesitance to adopt Prescott. Interestingly enough, those chips might work well in frozen Hell. That has to be the best cooling solution for any CPU. But, I digress.

This could be pretty exciting, once more information becomes available from Asus. I just can't see this adapter being particularly useful if it forces one to use the included 70mm fan/heatsink. But, you never know . . .

 

[Kazuo]

I dunno, I could see the Celeron-Ms possibly seeing a nice overclock with that HSF anyway. 1.5GHz C-M at 2GHz shouldn't be too unreasonable since it's made to support Dothan up to 2.2GHz. Nice, cheap, cool solution

 

[fAlCoNNiAn]

very interesting, but do you think that this will allow high overclocks? i personally dont think so. since mobile processors not only change the multi when not i use, but also the voltage, then consider this: if you overclock to something alittle high running at about 20% increase, when the computer is idle, the processor will drop the multi, which is amazing, lowering temps, but it will also drop the voltage, possibly making the overclock unstable.

i bring this up becuase i have a friend that jsut got the 6xx p4's, and he is very dissappointed. they use the multi/voltage drop that is a mobile cpu feature to lower the temp. he overclocked to about 3600mhz, giving it about 1.4x voltage. but when it dropped the multi to 14x, it lowered the speed to something alittle higher than the original spec, but nontheless higher than needed, and with this it dropped the voltage to a set 1.2vcore, this caused his system to be unstable and prime to not work. so i question the whole voltage adjustments made by mobile processors, do you think that this "adapter" will fix it the whole voltage drop issue? if not, then i personally dont see a point. cheers.

 

[Kazuo]

Celeron-Ms don't drop the multi.
And this adapter may feed it more voltage than it wants (built-in overvolting) so it may be quite well prepped for overclocking.
I don't think anyone could really justify using a Pentium-M anyway when a P-M costs 2x as much and gives maybe like 5% performance improvement. The Celeron-M doesn't have SpeedStep but that makes it yet better for desktop use, I think. Software FSB control to simulate SpeedStep would probably be much better for the average user. But that'd be a user choice.
In short, with Celeron-M this throttling doesn't exist so that's where the sweet spot is. It's basically just a nice alternative for the Intel fans who don't like P4 or any of the AMD processors.

 

[TStep]

I like it

 

[DrMrLordX]

Can't you disable Speedstep somehow?

 

[Vette73]

I bet if it works well Intel will be REALLY pissed. Think how much they charge for the 855 chipset. No one would buy it if you could use a 865/875 chipset, which is faster and cheaper

 

[THUGSROOK]

why doesnt somebody just make a i875 moboard for s479 already?

 

[Mingon]

Powerleap have had an adaptor for quite sometime (2yrs+) but when I contacted them they would only sell one with the cpu.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
why doesnt somebody just make a i875 moboard for s479 already?

Honestly, it's a joke! I've been sitting pretty with my i875 for over a year now, laughing at how inferior current S479 motherboards are.

Nothing has really blown my socks off or given me the urge to upgrade. Once I can get a dualcore CPU for a couple hundred bucks I'll upgrade, but in the meantime, I'm very happy with my P4 C.

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Nothing has really blown my socks off or given me the urge to upgrade. Once I can get a dualcore CPU for a couple hundred bucks I'll upgrade, but in the meantime, I'm very happy with my P4 C.

id give Dothan a shot IF there was a good moboard for it.
in the meantime, I'm very happy with my P4 B

 

[Kazuo]

Originally posted by: Mingon
Powerleap have had an adaptor for quite sometime (2yrs+) but when I contacted them they would only sell one with the cpu.

Ummm... I have never once seen info on this adapter from Powerleap, and I frequent their site like mad (even their int'l sites). Got a link to ANY info on it?

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Can't you disable Speedstep somehow?

You'd think so... but I'm sure they were smart enough to check the BIOS for such an option...
Regardless, one of the few differences between Pentium-M and Celeron-M is that P-M has Speedstep where C-M doesn't.

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
I bet if it works well Intel will be REALLY pissed. Think how much they charge for the 855 chipset. No one would buy it if you could use a 865/875 chipset, which is faster and cheaper

Yeah, but it'd probably only be reasonable to do on desktops where there is tons of space for voltage regulation and stuff necessarily to pull this off (the adapter is so big that odds are incorporating it into a laptop would be difficult). I don't know if Intel really cares what happens on the desktop end of things with the P-M or C-M.

Edit: I just realized that PowerLeap could bring up legal issues since they have patented adapters with voltage regulation on them... hope this doesn't turn into a problem.

 

[Acanthus]

Just a small thing to note, the Dothan does NOT benefit well from increased FSB or memory bandwidth that I875 provides, the CPU is not designed to utilize large caches either...

You will not gain much but price point going from i855 to i875.

Edit: Spelling

 

[Kazuo]

It doesn't benefit in a laptop situation from increased FSB because of power issues, as well. But the increased clock speed that comes with the increased FSB will be nice for it, to be sure. You can't say that it doesn't benefit at all- that'd be silly. You're bound to see SOME performance increase in certain apps regardless of CPU architecture with more memory bandwidth.

 

[Mingon]

Early into the centrino life I bought a pentium - m cpu from ebay, it was meant to be a p4-m but turned out to be a banias p-m. I then went on a bit of a search to try to find a way of using it (this was around 2 years ago) I contacted powerleap who told me that they had the converter but would only sell it with the cpu. This was when the cpus were very expensive so it would have cost circa $500 for both.

 

[Kazuo]

Edited. I found information that apparently Powerleap had prototypes for the adapter, but there was likely a problem with them as they never saw market. I'd trust ASUS anyway- they're known for putting out good reliable stuff.
X-bit Labs has a bit more info here.
Looks like it's limited to only 2 ASUS boards right now, and they're both i865. May well work with other 865 boards though More news as it develops.

 

[THUGSROOK]

yea but what about the cooler?
i wanna see the cooler, you know its gonna be cr@p.

 

[Kazuo]

Pics of it are somewhere. Just google for it.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
yea but what about the cooler?
i wanna see the cooler, you know its gonna be cr@p.

Probably, but with a banias or dothan that's good enough, even overclocked!

 

[Kazuo]

yeah, I think a 3000rpm 70mm fan should be able to cool something that puts out 30W

 

[Mingon]

Looking at the pictures on xbit-labs it seem like the holes surrounding the cpu (if the mobo has them) can be used. This means a zalman should work with some screw length adjustment. Again the pictures show that the fitting difficulties will be due to height, but, as the p4 has the IHS the difference should only be about 2-3mm and the sprung loaded screws used by zalman should be able to cope.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Mingon
Early into the centrino life I bought a pentium - m cpu from ebay, it was meant to be a p4-m but turned out to be a banias p-m.

Did you ever put this CPU into use?