 | |||||||||||||||
For many people the prospect of replacing both a motherboard and processor just to upgrade their processing power is not a palettable idea. Fortunatly some companies within the PC industry realised this problem and thus offered users the option of upgrading by using an overdrive processor. These are available from companies such as Intel, Kingston & Evergreen technologies, who produce overdrive chips for owners of PC's ranging from 486's through to Pentium Pro's. This page aim's to cover as many Overdrive processors as possible currently on the market. Why Overdrive?To many PC users the idea of using an overdrive processor is not an appealing one. They do have some compatibility and reliability problems (but then do most PC's in my opinion), but spare a thought for those who do not wish to spend somewhere in the region of £1000 only to replace an 18 month old PC. An 18 month old PC is a still very capable machine, but many based on VX and TX chipset motherboards cannot run faster than 233 MHz. Owners of some older machines such as those which were purchased in 1995 and 1996 can only run non-MMX processors, and so are further restricted by this. Also owners of machines made by companies such as Compaq and Packard Bell use proprietary design motherboards and so are greatly restricted in their upgradability. This is where the Overdrive Processor comes in. Overdrive Processors use mini boards which plug into the the motherboards ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) Socket, which allow chips such as the AMD K6-2 and Intel Pentium MMX to be run in machines which could not otherwise run these chips. These overdrive kits perform all the voltage regulation needed for the processor and other technical problems.
Beware though, some motherboards cannot accept an overdrive processor as their BIOS will not recognise the CPU used. This may require
the BIOS to be flashed with an update, or the Overdrive attempt to be abandoned.
Other Overdrive Processors at:
|
|||||||||||||||
|
