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Likely upgradesNow we turn our attention to what is the most likely upgrade path a user can choose for their motherboard. We are going to look at boards as based upon their chipset. For this article we are going to focus mainly upon Intel chipsets as there would be a huge amount to cover if we were to look at all the non-Intel chipsets too. Now, onto the chipsets... Intel i430FX (FX) chipset based boardsPeople in our opinion are a bit like car owners when talking about their PC's, they will get offended if you call it a pile of old junk. Well, we will try to be nice towards machines fitted with the original Pentium chipset, the i430FX. As this chipset is now very old in PC terms, upgradability is rather limited as most boards could only go up to around 133 or maybe even up to 166 MHz. We have not seen an FX board which can run 200 MHz. Upgradability here is severly limited. Due to the age of the board there are very few capable of running split voltages. This means Pentium MMX and K6 chips are out of the question for these venerable old boards. The most realistic upgrade would be to use an overdrive chip as you would be hard pressed to get these boards faster than 133 MHz. Intel i430HX (HX) chipset based boardsThe i430HX chipset was the first of the second generation of Pentium chipsets and so is far more advanced than its FX predecessor. When it comes to upgrading, HX based boards are something of a mixed bag in our opinion. Most HX boards are capable of running all the way up to 200 MHz, but we have seldom seen one capable of going higher than that. There are a few that can only go to 166, so again, check to see what it can support. HX boards though did straddle the great divide between single & split voltages. Later examples of HX boards are capable of running Pentium MMX and K6 processors. These though are only realistic upgrades to 200 MHz, 233 MHz is still a rarity.
Again, check to see that your board is one of the later revisions to see whether it can support split voltages.
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