I’m looking to extend they life of my dual-PII 333MHz (IntelliStation M Pro, LX chipset) until the end of this year (when I’m due for a new one). I’m not interested in overclocking. Also, I wish to keep the machine fully intact instead of migrating some components to a new machine. So, buying something more expensive with an eye to the future isn’t something I want to consider, as by year’s end it’ll be ‘crap’ anyway.

PII 450s are now between $100-$120. So, for $250 (incl. S&H) I could get 2 new CPUs. My questions are…

1) Will a PII 450 work with the LX chipset, or does it only work with BX?
2) If it does work, will I actually see an appreciable speed increase (say, maybe 25%)?

Other recommendations are welcome. I’ve considered a GeForce, but from all that I’ve read I doubt it would do diddlysquat for what’s now becoming a low-end machine.

Machine:
2x PII 333MHz (LX)
128 MB ECC RAM (66MHz)
4.3 GB UW-SCSI-3 HD
CD-ROM, SCSI-2
TNT(1)
V2 (SLI)
WinNT (soon Win2k)

The LX mobo only runs with a 66Mhx FSB...where the rating of a P2-450 assumes a 100Mhz FSB - therefore your bang-per-buck ratio is much lower (you can do the maths yourself

Also, the LX chipset doesn't support AGP, so a GeForce is out of the question - no-one makes a PCI GeForce card...

Probably your best upgrade at this point would be more RAM, especially if you get PC100 or PC133 that would migrate easily to the new machine...

Check www.pricewatch.com for prices...




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SuperMicro P6DBS (dual UW-SCSI) BIOS 2.2, 2*Celery 300a @ 450Mhz, 384MB PC100 RAM
SCSI-A=4.3Gb+9Gb, SCSI-B=Tosh32x CD-ROM, Yamaha4416 CD-RW, Iomega ZIP100, IDE1=4.3Gb
IBM EtherJet 10/100 NIC PCI + Nortel ADSL "modem"
CL TNT1 AGP + Quantum3D Voodoo2 SLI PCI
SoundBlaster Live PCI (not Value)
Win2K build 2195 Retail (no 120-day eval)

I got AGP. It's FX that doesn't do AGP.

who said that an lx mobo doesn't use agp?
i have an lx mobo, Asus P2L97, and i have an AGP slot, with an Xpert 98 AGP video card.
and a friend with the same mobo, running an creative AGP tnt card.
so i guess im wrong
<VBG>
=)

Then you don't have much of a choice. Just get more ram and bare yaself till the end of the year. Ya board CAN'T take more then 333 so just live with it. And why don't u wanna clock ya CPU's a bit? THey will last u for at least this year. Running 'em at 75Mhz fron side bus should not harm the CPUs at all.

U can alsp check with ya board makes if u can use celerons in ya board. then u can get a couple of 400-466 celerons and....

Sorry, mesa culpa, etc. I was commenting based on an old LX board I had a while ago, which didn't have AGP...

Then again, it was from Dell, so...