p!!!? celeron II? ahhhh my head hurts.

[ghetto buck]

Here is my situation I was planning on upgrading to either a p3 700 or a celeron 566 for overclocking. I read a review of the cubx on anandtech as well as got apex? that both said it was a great board for overclocking. So I decided on the celeron 566 since my current memory (256 megs 128 kingston value toshiba modules, 128 micron) is pc100 and i don't want to replace it with 133 to overclock the p3. So I ordered the celeron from buy.com (celeron is still backordered so i could cancel it) and I bought the cubx from mcglen.com. However right after getting the cubx from mcglen.com I start hearing about voltage problems with the celeron 2 (dirty weasle on this board had quite a bit to say about it ) Anyway to get to the point what should I do?

A. Is it a fixable problem that Asus could just release a bios update and fix it?

B. Cancel my Celeron and go with a P3 without much overclocking ability?

C. Send the board back at a restocking fee and get something else?

As you can see i'm baffled and would appreciate any help PLEASE!

 

[ghetto buck]

your help would be like a bottle of advil.

 

[Ulysses]

I'm not familiar with the voltage problem you refer to, but you should get the P3 700 in any event. That's definitely a good P3 to buy - it's priced attractively and oc's well. Of course faster is always better. Get the 700 in the FC-PGA format, of course. Be sure to get one from the cB0 stepping if you're going to o'clock. To determine that check the CPU's S-spec against this table before you buy:

http://support.intel.com/support/processors/sspec/p3p.htm

A cB0 P3 700 should overclock very well. Even if not overclocked it is better when you look at benchmarks than a Celeron II 600 at 850 or so, since the C2 has a much slower bus and less efficient L2 cache. Your memory may or not prove to limit you that much. PC100 will probably be stable at up to 115 FSB or maybe higher, which is 800 MHz.

The CUBX is a highly regarded board. Here's a quote from

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1250:

"Overall there are two motherboards that definitely stand out among the seven in this roundup, the ASUS CUBX and the Microstar BXMaster. The CUBX is definitely a very well made Socket-370 motherboard. Its combination of an on-board Ultra DMA 66 controller and an additional USB hub works alongside the board's JumperFree setup to make the CUBX very well rounded. If you have a Socket-370 CPU and are looking for a BX motherboard that can run at 133MHz then the CUBX is definitely the board you want to pick. "

You ought to know that it would take about 20 bitches from some 'dirty weasel' to equal just one recommendation from Anand Shimpi.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

The P3 is much better overall but a bit costlier - and your OC chances may be hurt by your RAM, but you're almost guaranteed at least 133 fsb with that PC100.

 

[ghetto buck]

Thanks Ulysses and RagingBitch both your responses have helped me very much! I am now strongly considering canceling my celeron and going for the p3 700. If this helps any I just checked my ram and it is in fact micron with the -8e extension which i believe is 8ns 2 2 3, but not positive, and the kingston is in fact toshiba modules with the extension -80 which i'll also assume is 8ns. Correct me if i'm wrong but I believe that means there both rated at 1000/8ns = 125 mhz. A p3 700 with my cubx which has a 124mhz bus setting would put me at 868 and my pci at a reasonable 31.25, is this reasonable? I'm doubting 2mhz is going to affect performance of my sb live value and netgear 310tx? However this would put my agp bus at 81mhz quite a bit out of spec. I have a creative labs tnt2 ultra, does anyone have experience with this card handling bus speeds that high? Thanks again i'll tell you how things turn out.

 

[DeadlyKnight]

i dont know what to tell you if you think a p3 doenst have much overclok ability how come my 550e will do 913 or 825 . my p3 450 will do 600 easy .the cel 2 doesnt stand up to p3 thats my 2 cents

 

[ghetto buck]

DeadlyKnight, I wasn't implying the p3 doesn't have much overclocking ability, I know it does especially the new cb0 stepping. What I was saying is that in my situation I have pc100 memory so the memory was going to be my limitation. After all a celeron starts at 66mhz bus whereas a p3 starts at 100 so how far my memory would go is uncertain. I'm sure if I do get the p3 700 it will be my memory that is the limiting factor not the cpu, which stings me! If I didn't have 256 megs and if memory prices weren't rising, I would probably sell my pc100 and get pc133 but right now that isn't an option for me.

BTW your system looks sweet! Is your micron memory rated at 133 or 100?

 

[kyoshozx]

Even if your memory will only allow you to get to 112 FSB your P3 should still out perform the celeron running at 850mhz.
Check this out...
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1264&p=8

Look at the celeron running at 850mhz on the BX chipset, it doesn't perform that much better than a p3 600mhz. I believe in this benchmark the celeron2 has the highest MHZ but it doesn't perform at the top of the pack.

From what I've been seeing it takes a celeron2 another 150mhz to equal a p3.

 

[DeadlyKnight]

133 bro and now that i got the bugs worked out i would have to say i think its sweet, thx

 

[ghetto buck]

Good article Kyoshozx, all signs are definately pointing to p3 im just wondering if my creative labs tnt2 ultra will run on the 87 mhz bus speed, does anyone have this card with a similiar setup?

 

[Ulysses]

pg:

1. On vid card o'clocking & BX boards see: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1270

2. See also kyoshozx's point about the Cele vs. Cumine. I have made this identical point in other threads. The o'clocking potential of the Cele is great but the o'clocked performance is not, when benchmarks are compared. The effective difference between an overclocked Cele and a stock Cumine is at least 200 MHz!!! I.e., a 600/100 Cumine beats an 850/100 Cele.

In hot rodding they used to say that 'horsepower sells cars, but torque wins races.' In PC's it might be 'MHz sells PC's' but FSB and memory cache architecture win benchmarks,' but we won't get into that here.

 

[ghetto buck]

Ulysses, once again your post is just what I needed! They had my card in the line up and it appears it runs perfectly with sba disabled. Just for that I shall dub my P3 Ulysses... well maybe not but your help is definately much appreciated

 

[Yoshi]

Go for the Celeron, it is cheap and pretty fast.

Myself: Abit BM6, Celeron566@850@1.7VDC, 160Mb PC100, Win2KPro, One Fast System.

 

[ghetto buck]

I'd love to yoshi but unless someone thinks asus can fix the celeron voltage problem in the cubx soon, I think it's P3 time for me. And I am a serious cheapskate so this defies all my logic but hey Ulysses brought up some good points.

 

[FatFree]

Just Get Celeron 533A
mine is running at 880mhz @ 1.75v on P3V4X.

it only cost less than $100. yet it perform as well as $200 class pentium !!! at most circumstances

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Umm... sure, its a good deal. But if you even overclock that $200 P3 even a little(for example, a P3-650E cb0 for around $200 should easily get over 933 or so) it would CRUSH your celeron 2 in performance. And in every single benchmark.



Mike