The slot 1 mobo is not compatible with socket 370 CPU's in most instances(I do have an old slot board with an adapter and a 370 FCPGA chip).
If you could find the adapter that would convert slot1 to socket370 it wouldn't justify the expense.
Dell won't support your upgrade in a new BIOS, so your mobo may not recognize the new chip correctly.

You won't see much of a difference in performance between an P3 800Mhz and P3 1.13Mhz.

And last but not least, a P4 1.6a Northwood costs $132 including shipping, the chip will run easily to 2Ghz and beyond and will run 533fsb already(although Intel hasn't released the official 533 part yet, we know how to do it).

So save some change for a new mobo and P4, and build something that will really let your work fly! ;)

Tommy P.

I've heard some hearsay that the 1.6a P4 supplies are about to start drying up pretty soon and since they're so good at overclocking with base FSB=133 (x4=533) to 2.13GHz, so if you think you might want one you might think about getting one while they're still cheap and available. Food for thought anyway. You know the much-greater-than 2GHz P4s with officially supported 133-based FSB speeds when released are gonna be pricey. New chip releases always have been.

Thanks guys, for steering me the right way. (RO is rapidly winning my vote for $24/year membership fee.)

As far as OC'ing, I'm a little apprehensive to rely on it generally speaking. But it sure sounds good. (I used to OC my old PII400 to 448 all the time.) But are these 1.6a's OC'ed to 2.13 really rock solid? Is it also possible to just OC a little but not so aggregious? I require stability first and foremost. And if I wanna go that route, does the stock fan do the trick, or am I looking at getting out paste and 'hoping' I attached the fan right?!

BTW, in terms of the FSB, are you also saying that a 1.6a runs on a 133FSB setting better than say the 2.0a or the 1.8a?

Guess I'd just crank up the FSB to 133, leave the memory at it's 4x setting (using memory like PC2700 DDR I presume), reduce the PCI multiplier from 4 to 3, and I'm ready to rock at 133/533 hey?

theDude

BTW, in terms of the FSB, are you also saying that a 1.6a runs on a 133FSB setting better than say the 2.0a or the 1.8a?

No not if you buy the Intel 2.0a or 1.8A. Only if you overclock the 1.6a to 2.0 or 1.8. This has to do with the way the mobo changes the AGP/PCI with partial multiples of 33.
To overclock the 1.6a to 2.0, you would be running the FSB at 125Mhz(16 X 125 = 2000). This causes the mobo to run the AGP/PCI lower than spec.

Your ram can be PC2100(which runs stock at 133Mhz). Your CPU/memory ratio is set to 1:1.

Heres the math. Intel locks the 1.6a at a multiplier of 16. At stock setting of 100FSB (quad pumped at 4 X 100 = 400 CPU FSB) you get 16 X 100 = 1600Mhz. PC2100 runs at 133Mhz, so 16 X 133 = 2128Mhz ( with the CPU FSB quad pumped at 4 X 133 = 533FSB).

In other words, the whole point of getting a 1.6a instead of a 1.8a or a 2.0a is because the vast majority of 1.6a chips (made after JAN-2002) are reliably running rock solid and cool with 133MHz OC'd FSB, and the 1.8a and 2.0a aren't -- that pushes their grand total speed with 18x and 20x multiplier above the stability thresholds. Probably the vast majority of production batches of recently finished P4 northwood core wafers are really passing the reliability tests at like around 2.2 GHz grand total speed (regardless of what FSB speed and multiplier), but not much more than that. Sales quotas say they have to sell a certain number of 1.6a chips, so those cores are getting hardwired with the 16x multiplier lock when assembled into finished chips..... or something like that.

If the 1.6a is going to be discontinued very soon, then to reep the benefits of having your FSB at 133, you'll have to wait until the "official" 133 FSB P4's are released in a probably a couple months... or you'll have to look for the more rare-to-find 1.8a or 2.0a that'll take an OC'd FSB to 133 without having to resort to outlandish things like water cooling, refrigeration and forcefeeding the chip with high voltage.

Now having said all that mush, using any P4 whether be a 1.6a OC'd or a stock non-OC'd 2.0a running in the neighborhood of 2 GHz is pure pleasure. Running at the stock 1.6 GHz, well, just ain't quite as jazzy.

Okay, I'm sold on 1.6a! A bit of confusion remains however. For best stability with our PCI audio cards, we want to maintain the AGP/PCI speed at spec -- 33 mhz. So we need a BIOS that allows a PCI multiplier to alter from 1/3 down to 1/4. (133 x 1/4 = 33mhz).

My confusion is that on reading tomshardware reviews of i845 motherboards, they seem to say that the Abit BD7-Raid is the only board that allows for this PCI reduction... to run 133FSB and keep PCI in spec. In fact, in the bottom paragraph they point to this issue and give the board 'top honors' largely because of this feature. They don't say anything about this feature in regard to Asus P4B266 and Gigabyte GA-8IRXP, although they do say these are both good OC'ing boards.

So, do the Asus and Gibabyte boards in fact also allow spec AGP/PCI when running 133FSB? I'm digging thru manuals online, and can't seem to find the answer. Although I can't imagine that great OC'ing boards, allowing FSB in increments of 1mhz would NOT allow the AGP/PCI ratio to be settable as well. But on the other hand, tomshardware is a pretty reliable source of info... so I'm in a quandry. Guess toms must be wrong, though, cuz I see the ANUS group here running spec PCI, right?

Was leaning toward the GA-8IRXP cuz it has all the features I dig (Promise Raid ATA/133, on board LAN, assignable IRQs). The Asus P4B266 is cool too, but no Raid... in it's favor though, it tested at Anantech as best OC'ing stability... (not that I plan on running FSB at 170mhz FSB though!) The Abit, I don't know about... has Highpoint Raid, which I've read is a little less desirable than the Promise for our purposes.

Thanks again. BTW, this is the BEST audio board around, bar none. Gonna link it from my own guitar sites (http://www.stetina.com)

theDuDe