Hullo,
I have been trying to research whether a Bcm/Gvc "QS694VP" motherboard would be able to use a 1 ghz pentium-3 chip, 7.5x 133mhz bus speed. But the only thing I can find out is one sentence on the manufacturer's web site which says; "233mhz-933mhz, CPU speed/voltage support may be dependant upon motherboard/BIOS revision". Which seems vague, do they mean it can only be less than 933 depending on revisions? Or can it be more? The manual says nothing about cpu speeds.

Does anyone know that this motherboard can use a 1 ghz chip without burning out shortly afterwards? If it's not able to, can a 1 ghz (7.5 x 133) chip be run at 933 mhz (7 x 133) without problems? The multiplier (7.5, 7, etc) is jumper selectable on the motherboard, though the bus speed (133 mhz) can't be chosen that way.

I believe that means that the CPU speed must be between the said limits of 233mhz - 933mhz.

If you have the jumper to select the multiplier, than you SHOULD be able to run the CPU at 933 without problems.

You may want to get a second opinion about that, though.

Why not just buy a faster CPU? But yeah it should be able to run at 933. It may need better cooling though.

As long as it's the proper socket type, it sounds like it will run the chip with no problems, you'll just lose that extra 77mhz. I think what they were implying about the bios is that some older revisions may not support it, in which case you may have to flash it which is a pretty simple process. I've never had one burn up because of this, they just go to a lower speed... which isn't to say it can't happen, but I just doubt it would.

Well ...
I used to have a dual pentium-3 1 ghz server computer which served me for many years because I'm not a gamer so I didn't need the cutting edge. Until one day when I gave it a static shock that cooked most of the small components on the motherboard. I was able to save the cpu chips and the 768mb of pc133 memory, but then the technology was kind of old so I couldn't find another motherboard to put them in.

I used an AMD athlon/duron board for a while, but then I cooked it too. So then I retrieved an old pentium computer from my closet, and I'm using it but it's too slow for modern software.

A friend of mine gave me a qs694vp, which is lucky for me because I don't have much of a budget for computers right now. It's able to use all the pc133 memory I've got, and hopefully I can put one of my 1 ghz chips in at 933 mhz. The only other pentium-3 chip I've got is a 750, and I'd like to have the extra 183 mhz.

I am worried about the cpu voltage, the 1 ghz chip is 1.75v, compared to many old pentium-3 chips which ran at 1.65v, so I'm hoping the extra 0.1 volts won't slowly destroy the board.

I feel you would come out better if you just bought you a new CPU.

But the problem is, I eventually electrocute most of my computers, the AMD board was fairly new. And they start getting expensive to replace.

Try it and see what happens....it's old stuff anyways right? Heck, why not try to overclock it while your at it. Regardless, the voltage difference will eventually fry it.
Watch that static electic discharge. You can buy a very cheap grounding bracelet. Keep the electrical cord plugged into the power supply (but the computer off) when working on your system.

Nah, not if the mobo was made to work with it and the bios is correct. He could fit a P4 into it, as long as the socket was adapted and it could run the right speed, it would work fine for the duration. It would just set itself to the lower voltage. Like what ram does, if you have 133-333mhz ram and your system uses 133, it will still work just on the 133 setting.

We just had a whole stack of used pentium 3 800something mhz compaq deskpro's come in used from the DNR. The pentium 3 could run at a much higher speed, they were just on a slower mobo. One of them had a pentium 4 (I think socket 478) adapted to a socket 370 pentium 3.. weirdest processor I've ever seen, but it wasn't rigged. Came from the factory. Very strange.

I think I'm losing track of the conversation. Which person were you talking about when you said "He"?

I should have said she, my bad! I'm not used to having other girlies around on these computer forums!

If you're willing to spend a bit of money you can get some motherboards with CPUs included at newegg for a good price.

Like this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813185089
The processor is about 1.60Ghz

Episteme,
Actually I'm not very technical, I'm only likely to visit this section when I'm clueless. I'm kind of confused right now. I tried using the 1 ghz chip with it turned down to 933mhz, but the bios recognized it as 1000mhz anyways and used it like that, even though it's not supposed to be built for 1 ghz. And it seems to work, but most of the normal award-bios settings that are in the manual just aren't there to set. Like controlling which irqs go with what, or any of the hardware settings. So I downloaded the newest bios for it, which says right on their website includes irq setting, and flashed it. But the only thing that changed was what bios version it says it is. Everything else is identical. I don't know what to do now.

Hey, if you're putting in motherboards you're leaps and bounds ahead of most people... at least most people that those of us that frequent this section get to deal with daily anyway.

I have a stupid question for you... it sounds like you have a few motherboards laying around there, is it possible you just have the wrong book? But then the settings in the book would be for the old award bios, and you have the new one and all those settings might just be automatic. Another possibility is that the motherboard website is just flat wrong, some of those older manufacturers did a poor job of describing their product's capabilities. What is the brand? I hate to say don't worry about it... but I would watch it closely. You might try installing something cpu intensive and monitor the temperature. I assume your mobo doesn't have any sort of temperature monitor on it, being older, but you could leave the cover off and try to feel if it is getting hot, that might give you some idea if it's safe. You can gently touch the heatsink if you have your other hand grounded to something metal and feel the temperature. The fact that the bios is recognizing the chip's full power is a good sign though.

As a side note, did you use thermal compound on the processor before you put on the heatsink? I always forget to mention that and it's a pretty important step in the process.

Ashigaru - We use those boards at work sometimes if someone just wants an affordable mobo fix. They're pretty spiffy for the price! Newegg usually gives us cheaper prices than our wholesaler.

I spent most of yesterday trying to make that motherboard run right. It is a BCM qs694vp. I still had some thermal compund left over from the last time I tried to do something like this.

I'm pretty sure I have the right book, it has pictures and diagrams of the motherboard in it. I only have one other one around, an Athlon board which was also given to me but didn't work at all.

The BCM board technically functioned, but things were so wrong with the bios that it's still unusable. Most of the bios settings weren't there, whether I flashed it with the newest bios or the oldest original bios. And it completely ignored any settings I made to the items it did have. It's like it was on full automatic all the time, it even ignored jumpers too. But it's automatic settings were wrong enough that programs couldn't run for more than a few minutes without crashing.

I got so many shocks it was aweful, and BCM's tech support hasn't replied. I think I give up.

If you take out the battery with the power cord unplugged wait a few seconds then put the battery back in the bios will reset. I've had to do that a few times.

Thats an easy way to figure out if it is a bios problem and not a problem with the mobo.

That works, sometimes you have to leave it sit without the battery for a couple minutes if they're stubborn. There's usually a reset jumper in there somewhere as well but the battery method is better.

Another thing that can make it jiggy... and it sounds rudimentary but it gets a lot of people, is the RAM. Sometimes it can go bad or it's not the right speed, or there's two incompatible speeds in there. May not apply at all, but it's a thought.

Another possibility is that it's just old and has gone bad. How do the capacitors look? Any bulging on the tops? Sometimes they're shipped with somewhat of a curve to the top so it's hard to judge, but if some are a bit bulged, and some are not, it could just be you have some bad caps.

The bios thing is weird though.... I've only had the bios go bad once that I remember and it was nasty. You'd hit the key to enter setup and it was just lines and you could make out a few letters. I tried to flash it and got the same thing, I think the chip that held the data was bad or something. If it is acting that strangely it's a possibility I suppose. You could try googling your revision and see if you can hunt down what exactly you're supposed to be able to change and what you can do in your computer. It might give you something to go on, or let you know if it's time to close the book on this poor little board.

I just hate giving up on things, a good mystery is such a challenge.

Hmm, nothing looks bulgy. The bios chip is in a socket, so I guess it could maybe be replaced, if it was the problem. Using a single dimm of memory should be mean it either works or it doesn't, I tried all of the ones I have, each alone, but it didn't help. It didn't originally have a battery, I had to add that, which means it didn't have one for a long time. I give up. But I can't buy a new one.