On 18 Jul 98 at 13:11, Mick Fitzpatrick wrote:

> I want to up grade my standard P166. But that's all I want to do.
> So any advise on the highest I can go with a new processor that
> will simply fit my existing slot will be appreciated.

  It's going to depend on features of your motherboard:

1. Multipliers

  Since a P166 runs at 2.5x66, your board should also have a 3x
setting.  [Your P166 may or may not actually run at 200 MHz if set
this way (over-clocking))....]
  If your CPU won't do 200, you may be able to find a vanilla P200
still in a dealer's stock.

  If you want to go over 200, you're looking at a CPU with MMX.  Odds
are good that such a CPU will be usable in your board only if the
board provides separate settings for I/O and Core voltages.  [The
Cyrix/IBM -L series require this even though they don't do MMX; one
of the recent AMD K6 models (266?) uses 3.3 for both, and so can be
used in a motherboard that doesn't split them.]

  There are add-on products which can allow newer CPUs to be used in
older motherboards, but the cost of going that route isn't much less
than getting a new board.

  If you can tell us what board you have, people here should be able
to make more specific recommendations.

David G