I upgraded a Gateway Thor MB P5-166 to an AMD K6III-400 from
http://www.powerleap.com/Products/k6iii.htm 2 1/2 years ago.  It did require
a Phoenix BIOS which cost me $100.  Knowing what I know now I would have
taken the motherboard/processor/memory upgrade route for about the same
price or less (with today's prices) and donated the old parts to a school
computer lab.  Just a thought.



To answer your questions:



1.  Has anyone ever put an AMD K6-III/333 in a socket 7, p5-133, ATX mobo?
Yes, see above.

2.  Do I need to change the BIOS?  Most likely

3.  Is there a way to save the current BIOS settings with out writing them
down manually?  If you purchase a BIOS upgrade, the disk installation
program may provide you with the option to save the old BIOS.  Mine did.

4.  If my jumpers are all used for setting MHz and not voltage, how do I set
the voltage for the AMD?  You don't if I remember correctly, however, this
was compensated for with the Powerleap adapter.

5.  Gateway P5-133, ATX are the MHz jumpers just listed as that (so the user
can make sense of their settings), but actually tell the voltage regulator
what vdc to use?  How do I check the current (Pentium) voltage set-up?  I do
not have an answer for this one.  If I remember my research, there was no
easy way to change the voltage with jumpers.  The jumpers were used to
indicate the processor speed only.

6.  Will my current sound card and modem work with the AMD?  The Powerleap
adapter took care of the processors power requirements without affecting the
cards.  Mine worked fine.

7.   If I turn the voltage reg down, will that affect the rest of the mobo
and the other boards?  probably... positively or negatively is anyone's
guess, I would guess that a decrease would negatively affect the system; it
depends upon the degree of change and the boards tolerances.  anyone else?

8.  If I exceed the cache amount and the processor bus speed, will it slow
the computer down?  I do not understand this question.  My conversion
increased the speed of the system considerably.

9.  Should I just go with a 200 MHz Pentium?  This is the easiest and most
painless path; however, the powerleap upgrade, for me, has evolved into
building systems for myself and family which I thoroughly enjoy.



Considerations are budget, skill level, and current mobo config.  If you
have several ISA cards and want to keep them, you may still be able to find
a socket seven ATX mobo for $50 to $60.  Tiger Direct has an FIC board with
2 ISA/4 PCI and an AGP slot advertised with a free AMD K6-450 for 59.95;
another $20 would get you the K6-550.  It does take SDRAM though, however
for around $30 for 256K you could create a faster computer system (100 MHz
bus as opposed to the 66 in addition to the processor and memory speed
increases) for around $100.00 including shipping... about what I paid for
the BIOS.  Do not forget the heatsink!



Eric Heath



There is no escape from our own imperfect selves.


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