At 23:29 04/02/01, Stanislav Rabinovich wrote:

>  I have motherboard SOYO SY-6BA +IV and Intel Pentium II
>  450 MHz (slot 1).  User Manual writes that this mainboard
>  supports CPUs with frequency up to 600 MHz.


The user manual for your motherboard was printed before the
Coppermine version of the Pentium III processor came out.


>  Recently I found on www.soyousa.com that this board supports
>  up to 800 (100x8) MHz (and I can see that in my BIOS settings)
>  and have ordered already processor Intel Pentium III 700E MHz
>  (SLOT 1 OEM).
>
>  But some people told me that this "coppermain" processor
>  needs 1.5v core voltage and probably my board can't give
>  such small voltage.


These people are wrong. The processor needs 1.65 or 1.70 volts
depending on the "stepping" (the revision) of the processor.
(Intel introduced a new stepping of the PIII about 6 months
ago that wants the higher voltage.) The 1.70 volt Coppermines
(stepping cC0) are more common now than the 1.65 volt Coppermines
(stepping cB0). They are also supposed to be better because some
of the mistakes that were present in the design of the 1.65 volt
Coppermines have been fixed. See
<http://support.intel.com/support/processors/sspec/p3p.htm> for
the latest information ons Intel's Pentium III processor. The
design "mistakes" are documented in the "Pentium III Processor
Specification Update" which you can download from
<ftp://download.intel.com/design/PentiumIII/specupdt/24445328.pdf>.


> >> Please, if someone has info about maximal core voltage of
> >> coppermain processors let me know.


You shouldn't worry about maximum voltages. Your PII-450 used
2.00 volts. The only problem could have been if your
SOYO SY-6BA+IV motherboard couldn't supply a voltage *low*
enough for a Coppermine PIII. But Soyo says that it can.
You have to believe Soyo's website and not worry about it.


> >> Also, how I could check this situation:
> >> the new CPU could blow-up before I will able to read out
> >> core voltage value in BIOS?


No. The motherboard's voltage regulator supplies (within a 5%
error range allowed by Intel) the voltage that the processor
asks for. (The motherboard reads a signal from certain of the
processor's pins which tells the motherboard what voltage to
use.) If the motherboard's voltage regulator cannot supply this
requested voltage, the voltage regulator will shut down and the
computer will not boot.


In another message, Stanislav wrote:

>  You can find that in Support-FAQ-CPU Related section:
>
>                           PIII SLOT I
>                     Model       PIII CPU (MHz)
>          650     667     700     733     750     800     800EB
>
>  6BA+IV  Yes      No     Yes      No     Yes     Yes      No
>
>  Also I see that in my BIOS settings.
>  My doubts are only about core voltage but I can't get this info.
>  If this board support PIIIs does that mean it can produce 1.65v
>  in CPU auto-detect mode ?


I went to <http://www.soyousa.com/faqs1_cpu.html> and they do indeed
say that your motherboard can support Coppermine PIII processors.
(The board supports only the 100 MHz. based Coppermines.)

You should have no trouble using the PIII-700E that you ordered.
It should be auto-detected and the correct voltage provided.

You could even have bought a PIII-850E. (PIII processors completely
ignore the multiplier setting of the motherboard. If the motherboard
can only ask for up to 8X, the PIII-850 or even a PIII-1000 would
still work.)

I would suggest that you flash your motherboard BIOS to the latest
version available. The reason for this is that Coppermine processors
have errors in their design (all CPUs do, they're called "errata")
but Intel allows the motherboard BIOS to correct some of these errors
by loading "microcode" corrections into memory as the computer boots.
You want the BIOS to contain the latest microcode updates because it
may help your computer to run more stably. You should upgrade to the
November 11, 2000 BIOS at <http://www.soyousa.com/686bios.html>.
I believe this is file <http://www.soyousa.com/bios/686/bah2aa2a.bin>.
(Please check at to make sure that I picked the correct file.)
Be sure to flash the BIOS before and not after installing your new
processor.

Regards,
Bill

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>