In the Lab
,ab tested 0entium --to-3ocket 4 adapter
Teaching an Old
Board New Tricks
A behind-the-scenes look at Maximum PC testing
P
entium M freaks who want to use
Intel’s mobile CPU in a desktop
board have had a bitter pill to
swallow: The only boards made to
accommodate the mobile proc are micro-
ATX. The micro-size version of ATX limits a
user to a maximum of three PCI slots, and
even worse, most of the Intel 855-based
chipsets use the older ICH4M south bridge,
which doesn’t support SATA. Furthermore,
Pentium M motherboards tend to be expen-
sive because of the premium Intel charges
for its mobile chipsets.
Well, Asus is aiming to change all that
with its CT-479 adapter, which fits into
Asus Socket 478 full-size motherboards
and makes them Pentium M-compliant.
Currently, only the Asus P4P800SE, P4P800-
VM, P4C800-E, and P4P800-E Deluxe run
with the adapter, but the company says
future BIOS updates will enable all of its
Socket 478 boards to support the CT-479.
The adapter is amazingly easy to use. Step
one: Make sure your board is flashed with
the latest BIOS to support the Pentium M.
Step two: Plug your Pentium M processor
into the adapter. Step three: Insert the whole
package into your Socket 478 board. Becausethe adapter prevents you from using a stan-
dard Socket 478 heatsink, the CT-479 ships
with a custom heatsink. It’s not pretty, mind
you, but the fan is more than you need for
the low-wattage Pentium M.
We couldn’t secure the newer 533MHz-
bus version of the Dothan Pentium M, but
we did get the adapter up and running in a
P4C800-E board using Intel’s 875P chipset
and an older 2GHz Dothan Pentium M.
We had to set the jumpers from 533MHz to
400MHz for our chip. Once that was done,
we inserted the processor into the adapter
and carefully plopped the package into our
board. Unfortunately, our P4C800-E was a
very early engineering sample board (No.
12, to be precise), which would only boot
our 2GHz proc at 600MHz, even with the
latest BIOS.
At 600MHz though, the adapter worked
seamlessly as if we had any other Socket 478
CPU in place. Well, almost. The combina-
tion wouldn’t let us change the CPU mul-
tiplier in the BIOS. This could either be aproblem with the engineering sample board
or a limitation of the adapter.
So why run the 875P chipset instead of
855? The 875P delivers the tech we demand
from our mobos. While the 855 is stuck at
4x AGP, the 875P gives you 8x AGP. Whereas
the 855 only runs DDR333, the 875P sup-
ports DDR400. The 875P also features Gigabit
Ethernet direct from the north bridge for
maximum performance. And the ICH5R
south bridge offers both Matrix RAID and
native SATA support.
Still, there is a weakness to using the
adapter instead of an 855 motherboard: a
lack of fan control. On the P4C800-E, for
example, you have much less control over
the system fans than you do with Aopen’s
i855GMEm-LFS. The Aopen board also gives
you SpeedStep control over the clock speeds
of the processor—something we couldn’t
touch on the P4C800-E. Nonetheless, the
P4C800-E’s overclocking abilities and other
performance features far outstrip the 855
boards. All in all, it’s not bad for $49.66 MAXIMUMPC JUNE 200
The CT-479 seamlessly lets you
run a Pentium M in some Asus
motherboards—provided you
have the latest BIOS.Dual-Core Pentium on nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Update
I
ntel lovers face a serious dilemma if they want dual core and SLI on the same moth-
erboard: Intel’s 955 chipset doesn’t do SLI, and it’s been unclear whether nVidia’s
nForce4 will support dual core.
Well, we finally have dual-core info from nVidia. The company says dual-core support
for the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition boards is an option that motherboard manufacturers can
enable. nVidia says nForce4 SLI Intel Edition was designed to work with both single- and
dual-core procs and should work fine, but final qualification is up to the motherboard
maker. The only way to ensure that your mobo supports both dual core and SLI is to con-
sult the manufacturer or check the product box. If the box has both the dual-core logo
and the SLI logo, you should be set!
Intel, meanwhile, is “still examining dual-graphics capabilities for the 955X chipset.”