Sockets and Slots – What is the Deal?

written by Cyber5

So you’re ready for a faster computer? Well, the ride to getting there is fast and wild enough. No matter what you have in your computer now, it’s going to be an interesting learning process when you decide to soup it up!

I am going to skip the whole concept of adding RAM, because that is at least an article or 3 in itself nowadays. Instead, let’s journey into the world of CPU upgrades!

What are you using now? 386? 486? Pentium? Pentium Pro? Pentium 2? Pentium 3? AMD K6? K6-2? K6-3? Boy, it’s a dizzying list, isn’t it? No matter what you have – getting a faster one, or newer-technology one will probably increase your performance and productivity to some degree.

Let’s say you made the jump to a Pentium computer and now you want to go faster-you want a Pentium II. Well, you can’t have it. You’ll be forced to spring for a new motherboard, because PII chips don’t fit in sockets (Socket 7 is what your Pentium chip is sitting in). Hmmm-you can leave the world of Intel and jump on board the AMD train, because their last couple of generations (K6 thru K6-3) actually fit into a Pentium socket! Of course you will lose some Floating Point power, but you will go faster! Oh, you need Floating Point accuracy do you? Then you’re forced into the Intel upgrade, motherboard and all. There-that’s nice-twice as fast and you can upgrade again-ummm-errr-can you?

What if, down the line, you want to go faster, but don’t necessarily need a lot of onboard cache ram? Of course, you still want those FPU’s, otherwise you would have done the AMD thing-hmmm Celeron is nice, and look! They are on sale! Wow! You buy it, get it home, and ooops it’s PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array), and won’t fit into your Pentium II slot. It needs a socket – Socket 370 to be exact-almost just like the old Penitum socket, just different. Drats. Well, off to the local store to buy a Socket 370-to-Slot 1 Adapter-there problem solved. Pentium 3 upgrade? No problem! Just pop it into the Slot 1 slot-ooops-board doesn’t recognize it? Better pop your PII back in, hit the internet, download the latest motherboard driver so that the P3 can be recognized – flash your BIOS with it (cross your fingers here) then install the new chip-whew-that wasn’t too scary, was it? You did remember to change your voltage jumpers didn’t you? If you had forgotten, you would be watching some smoke puffing out the back of your machine rather than reading this -so we’ll assume all went well.

So, now you have that nice Pentium 3 running at 400+ MHZ-but still-need more power-where to go? Look! There on the horizon – AMD is taking a bold, unexpected move – 600 MHz of pure computing power, with superior Floating Point Units! Quick, buy it! Ok, ready to install it in that old Pentium board you had (socket 7)? Too bad-AMD abandoned the socket architecture too-but wait-it looks like it will fit in your PII slot-ooops-that’s a Slot1-the new chip is a Slot A type-hmmm-new board again!

What ever happened to the theory of Overdrive chips? Remember from the x86 days when you could pop another chip in to make your computer faster, rather than replacing the actual CPU-well I think 12 people worldwide actually ever used the Overdrive socket, as the OD chips were more expensive than just tossing the whole deal and starting fresh-so perhaps that isn’t the best idea.

What is the best idea? I think AMD was onto something with Super7 architecture-continue developing, eeking out better performance from a standardized architecture for as many generations as possible. This 1.5 generation change-over theory is killing us consumers-the loyal customers. It’s also really making me mad! Hey, I’m the first to recognize that every architecture has its flaws and limits – but work around them for a few generations – don’t keep changing boats mid-stream! Let’s wait until we get to another shore, then change boats – every 5 years. Not every 5 months. This is getting ridiculous!

So, with all the possible upgrades out there, what will I be jumping to? I’m staying loyal to AMD and going with the Athalon chip. They stood by me and my motherboard while Intel kept trying new waters – with no real goal in sight-so I feel AMD deserves my money. I hope that with their new architecture that they will stand by it for 4 generations or more (every 100MHz of increased speed is NOT a generation!!). I hope they plan on taking the Athalon (previously called the K7) at least to 1200 MHz, then I will be ready to switch to something newer and faster-but if they start making random choices like Intel – then I just may have to quit computing altogether.

This article is not meant to endorse any product – just to make the consumer wary that the CPU market is highly volatile, and while your local dealer may tell you that you can upgrade your CPU – don’t count on being able to upgrade too far, as it most likely will require a new motherboard, or at the very least some type of adapter!

-Cyber5

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