Installation
  
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Installation will vary in difficulty depending what you have. If you have a Dell PC, the hardest part will be removing that fan shroud. The heatsink was a little tough to remove as well since they used some sort of adhesive to attach it to the CPU. Anyone with a DIY setup will have no problems setting up the PL-P4/N. Simply remove your old heatsink/fan, and P4 Willamette, drop in the adapter, Northwood, and attach the power to the adapter. Mount the included heatsink, and you're done.
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Prior to installing, it'd be a good idea to update your BIOS. Our Dell Precision 330 did have the latest BIOS, but it still seemed to have problems detecting the correct speed. I dug around to find out why this may be the case, and this is what I got from ...
"This is due to the fact that the BIOS, is unaware of this new type of CPU. It does not recognize it and thus tries to compare it to an older CPU. This in turn usually results in a fully cosmetic error."
I downloaded Intel's Processor Frequency ID Utility v4.61, and ran the utility before and after the upgrade...
 
Before Upgrade
 
After Upgrade
As you can see, the correct CPU speed is recognized by the utility, so this should put to rest any fears that the upgrade wouldn't work. Of course, we're going to run a few tests to be sure this works...
Test Setup
Dell Precision 330
512MB PC800 RDRAM
P4 1.8 Willamette CPU
PowerLeap PL-P4/N 2.6 Northwood Upgrade
Software: Windows XP, SiSoft Sandra 2003, PC Mark 2002
We will be running the benchmarks in two parts. First, we'll be comparing performance of the original Dell system vs the upgrade. I'll tell you now that we're expecting an improvement in speed. We'll then be benchmarking the upgrade vs our Shuttle XPC SS51 to see if a newer motherboard if you're better off getting a new motherboard/CPU combination. Please note that the Shuttle is a DDR platform, as I have been unable to acquire an i850E (133FSB, quad pumped to 533) in time for testing.
SiSoft Sandra 2003
 
Pentium 1.8 (left), PL-P4/N 2.6 (right)
We're going to be using the latest version of . There have been improvements, particulary support for the newer chipsets, Hyper-Threading and AGP3.
As expected, quite an improvement over the original CPU. Now for the MMX results...
As with the Arithmetic benchmarks, the PowerLeap PL-P4/N 2.6GHz MMX scores are marked improvement over the original 1.8GHz MMX scores. Now, on to the PC Mark 2002 results...
 
Pentium 1.8 (left), PL-P4/N 2.6 (right)
Nothing else to see here, move along...
Previous Page - Introduction
Next Page - Performance Continued
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PowerLeap PL-P4/N: When the Pentium 4 was released, early adopters were stung by the form factor change. Normally, a new motherboard would be in order, but we look at a cheaper and easier alternative.
