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Installing an unsupported CPU in a mobo...

dnguyen800 - Jan 31, 2004

		dnguyen800		Jan 31, 2004
			Okay, here's the problem. I bought a Duron 1.6ghz and I want to use an old ECS K7s5a motherboard because it uses PC133 ram. The problem is that the latest bios only supports up to Athlon XP 2600+ and the bios hasn't been updated in over a year. I just want to know what will happen if I put the CPU in. Will it not boot up? Will it just state that there is an unsupported CPU and continue working? I just need the CPU to be working at its specified speed, I don't care if the mobo doesn't call it a Duron during bootup.

		IceDigger		Jan 31, 2004
			It will boot up but will only read the duron up to whatever duron speed it supports. If you can get a bios upgrade.

		Alexvrb		Jan 31, 2004
			Yeah, it'll work. I don't believe that they have a BIOS update that displays the Duron's frequency properly above 1.3, but just make sure you're running the Duron at the right FSB and you'll be fine.

		dnguyen800		Jan 31, 2004
			That's good to know, but will the Duron 1.6ghz run slower because it's not supported? The new Durons have an FSB of 266 while the old Durons have an FSB of 200. I'm just wondering if my mobo will detect that the CPU is some version of a Duron and prevent me from changing the FSB to 133.

		it290		Jan 31, 2004
			I don't think it'll care. I've put Athlons in that exact same board before they were 'officially' supported by the BIOS, and it just said 'AMD Athlon 1600 MHZ' on bootup instead of the actual name of the chip. In fact, I think you can set it to 133 on chips that were designed for 100 with no problems (on the motherboard side at least, heh).

		Alexvrb		Feb 2, 2004
			Yes, you can do this with any chip, on basically any board that supports a 266 fsb. Of course, if you do so with a chip specified for a 200Mhz, you'd be overclocking it by a significant margin, and so having it run well is not guaranteed. Though obviously there are steps you take if you're going to OC. Now in your case, the Duron is meant to run with a 266Mhz FSB, so you aren't OCing. Just switch the jumper on the mainboard to 266 (133Mhz clock) if it isn't already. If you don't have your manual you can get a pdf of it I'm sure. It's amazing how inexpensive a decent Duron/Athlon rig is these days, isn't it?

		dnguyen800		Feb 2, 2004
			cool, thanks for the info.