Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/276

Powerleap PL-PII 433

by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 7, 1999 11:33 PM EST


Ask any hardware enthusiast what the best upgrade for your system is and the last answer youll probably get is an overdrive processor. Were all familiar with the Intel overdrive technology, for most non-technical users, the overdrive is essentially a cheap way to get out of spending hundreds of dollars on a full system upgrade. However to the tweaker, the overdrive has always been a poor performing solution Intel produced to somewhat tend to their users interests. title.jpg (44530 bytes)

For quite some time, Intel manufactured the only widely used overdrive processors, mainly because most third party manufacturers were either unable to duplicate Intels achievements because of patent limitations, or the simple lack of a better way to offer an upgrade in an overdrive package. The non-Intel overdrive processor finally became popular shortly after the end of the reign of the 486, with the release of AMDs higher speed enhanced 486 processors, particularly the 486 DX4/120 and the 5x86 133. Those two processors, alongside the Cyrix M1sc (5x86), allowed many third party CPU upgrade manufacturers to enter the "overdrive" upgrade scene, and essentially mooch off of Intels ad campaign for the overdrive technology.

Among the companies that gained popularity for being manufacturers of third party overdrive CPUs, one of the most popular happened to be a company named Evergreen. However in recent times, the industry has seen the torch passed once again, as Evergreen is a name hardly ever uttered from the mouths of tweakers, slowly being replaced by new name on the street, Powerleap.

Powerleaps Second Round Knock-Out

Powerleaps first appearance on AnandTech was with their PL-ProMMX upgrade, which essentially packaged AMDs K6-2 (and soon to be their K6-3) with an on-board voltage regulator, and an easy to install setup that allowed for a great percentage of the Pentium user population to take advantage of the K6-2s performance. Powerleap is back for a second round knock-out with yet another "overdrive-ish" upgrade processor, this time, theyre not going to be using an alternative CPU manufacturer as the basis for the upgrade. If you happen to be the formerly proud owner of a Pentium II 233, 266, or 300, you may want to listen up to what Powerleap has to say. The product is the Powerleap PL-PII upgrade, and as you can probably gather from the name, the upgrade is intended for Pentium II users. But whats the point of upgrading from an older Pentium II processor to something that can only be a faster model? Lets find out.

If you recall, Intels release of the Celeron processor (more specifically, the Celeron A, with 128KB of integrated L2 cache) came as a surprise to most hardware enthusiasts, as Intels vision of a "low-cost" processor ended up outperforming their flagship Pentium II processor in almost every desktop application scenario. The only thing that kept the Celeron out of the hands of the majority of the computer buying population was Intels uniquely worded advertising campaign. The campaign basically indicated, to those unaware of the differences, that the Celeron was simply an entry-level product and for true power, the Pentium II was the processor to be pursued.

Luckily, most of us know otherwise, and the Celeron quickly became the most attractive processor to purchase. Its low cost and highly competitive performance made the Celeron the ideal processor for Powerleap to base their next generation upgrade adapter upon. More specifically, the PPGA (Socket-370) Celeron.



Why Socket-370?

Everyone knows that the Socket-370 interface standard has only been around since the start of the year, therefore it would make absolutely no sense to produce a product based upon a standard most users haven’t even touched yet. Powerleap’s solution? Place the PL-PII on a Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter. Not only does this allow for the processor itself to be upgraded without having to replace the entire upgrade unit, but it also allows for a number of tweaks to be applied to the processor seated in the socket on the card, since there is essentially an interface between the Socket-370 CPU interface and the Slot-1 interface on your motherboard, this is where Powerleap comes in.

Also, since the Celeron is a completely clock multiplier locked processor, your motherboard doesn’t even need to have official support for the 6.5x clock multiplier required by the Celeron 433 due to the fact that the clock multiplier is a function of the CPU not of the motherboard. All you really need is BIOS support, and not complete BIOS support at that as you’ll soon find out…

The Powerleap PL-PII

The PL-PII, as briefly mentioned earlier, is a PPGA (Socket-370) Celeron processor, the initial shipments will include the newest Celerons clocked at 433MHz, on a Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter board that allows for the Socket-370 Celeron to be plugged into a card that will then plug into a Slot-1 motherboard.

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If that was all the upgrade consisted of, then Powerleap would most certainly be the laughing stock of the industry, since Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter boards have been around for quite some time now. Luckily, for Powerleap’s sake, they put a little more on the board’s PCB than your average converter board gives you.

ABIT is no longer the only choice

For starters, Powerleap decided that the time had come for overclockers to have more of an option than simply ABIT when it came to motherboards to choose from. In the past, the only Slot-1 Pentium II/Celeron motherboard manufacturer that allowed for an adjustable core voltage setting was ABIT, a motherboard manufacturer that isn’t known for having the most stable motherboards, yet the most overclockable, due to their unique ability to adjust the core voltage of any CPU.

The technique behind doing so is not too difficult at all, however it does require a bit of work on the part of the motherboard manufacturer, especially when dealing with Slot-1 CPUs, and has therefore, been avoided by most. The only other company ever to attempt a manual core voltage adjustment is Microstar International (MSI), with their latest BX board supporting virtually the same features as ABIT’s BH6. However, other than those two, most users were left without any options. This meant that if you were planning on overclocking your Celeron processor, your best route would be with an ABIT motherboard, regardless of what motherboard you preferred.

In realization of this situation, Powerleap included a voltage regulator on the PL-PII’s PCB, allowing for the manual adjustment of the processor’s core voltage from 1.8v up to 3.5v in 0.1v increments (0.05v increments from 1.80v to 2.10v). This same feature can be found on ASUS’ own Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, so it isn’t completely unique to Powerleap. Regardless of who thought of it first, the bottom line is that with Powerleap’s adapter, you are no longer limited to ABIT motherboards if you want the most control over how high you overclock your Celeron based system.

The on-board voltage regulator also means wonderful news for owners of older Pentium II motherboards that may not be able to supply the correct amount of voltage to the Celeron processor. Since the first Pentium II CPUs, based on the Klamath core, operated at a 2.8v core voltage setting, some motherboard manufacturers (none of the big names, mostly the el-cheapo board manufacturers) opted to save a few pennies and only include support for the 2.8v core voltage on their boards. This meant that newer processors based on the Deschutes core, which operates at 2.0v, would not work properly on the motherboards. Although AnandTech has yet to review a LX based motherboard without support for the 2.0v core voltage, there are apparently a number of them out there. Even if your motherboard supports the 2.0v core voltage, in many cases, unless your BIOS can properly detect the CPU, the voltage supplied would still be at the 2.8v mark. The on-board voltage regulator makes sure that your CPU gets the 2.0v it needs, no more, and no less. The scalable voltage settings also make sure that should the need ever arise to tweak the voltage supplied, the possibility is there.

The PL-PII adapter also has an auto-detect feature if you don’t plan on messing with core voltage settings at all, so those that are frightened of jumper settings (don’t worry, we are all a little intimidated the first time) don’t absolutely have to mess with them on the upgrade card.

The second feature ABIT held over a portion of the BX motherboard market was the option to run a 66MHz FSB processor at 100MHz and vise versa. Although most mainboard manufacturers did allow for this feature to be toggled, there were a few that didn’t. Once again, Powerleap makes sure that you have the greatest flexibility when it comes to which motherboards you can use the PL-PII adapter on, as it allows for the processor to fool the motherboard it is either a 66MHz or 100MHz FSB processor via a single jumper. Remember that this jumper only applies to motherboards with native support for the 100MHz FSB, the PL-PII does not add 100MHz FSB support to your older motherboards.

Two for the price of one

What inspired the production of the Powerleap PL-PII? Remember the Dual Celeron trick AnandTech documented a short while ago? Well, if there’s an unconquered market out there willing to be taken, leave it up to an ambitious company to make their presence known. The Powerleap PL-PII ships ready for dual processor operation, meaning you don’t have to solder any contacts together, you don’t have to manipulate any resistors, simply pop two Powerleap PL-PII chips in a dual processor motherboard and you’re off to performance heaven with Dual 433MHz Celerons at the command of your system.

Those of you that felt intimidated working with the Dual Celeron trick will find the PL-PII to be a breath of fresh air, as the Dual Processor option is enabled at the factory and doesn’t even require a jumper to set. Out of the box the PL-PII can be up and running for you in almost any configuration.



A few problems

There were a few issues AnandTech experienced with the PL-PII upgrades that kept Powerleap from receiving the perfect install recommendation. Keep in mind that the samples AnandTech received were purely engineering samples and were absolutely not ready for retail sale.

The first problem AnandTech ran into was that the preliminary written documentation and the markings on the PCB itself did not correspond to the actual settings to get the processors working at their full capacity. It seemed as if the settings in the manual were physically reversed from what they should have been, luckily AnandTech was assured that this would be corrected in the final shipping product, so no worries thus far.

After figuring out which jumpers to set for the CPU to operate at a 2.0v core and 66MHz FSB (100MHz x 6.5, as you can probably guess, is not a viable option for the Celeron 433, although many of us wish it were), AnandTech ran into another problem. The samples AnandTech received had pin B21, the pin that corresponds to whether or not the CPU is a 66 or 100MHz FSB unit, set to high, or 100MHz FSB by default. This meant that the CPU attempted to run at 100MHz x 6.5 in any BX board it was placed in, a bit unfortunate, however after a few email exchanges between Powerleap and AnandTech, the problem was found out to be isolated to the samples being tested. Once again, Powerleap assured AnandTech that the case was isolated and that the shipping models would not have this problem. Everything still seems ok here.

Here’s where the real problems set in. It’s plainly unfair to call the PL-PII an overdrive processor, simply because it does not uphold the primary overdrive goal, which has always been to achieve 100% backwards compatibility with older systems. If you remember back to the release of the Celeron processor, one of its major faults was that it was completely incompatible with motherboards based on the very first Slot-1 chipset, the Intel 440FX or Natoma chipset. This left many users in the dust, as 440FX boards were the only things available for those that went out and purchased the Pentium II during the first few months of its introduction. Just as you’d expect, the Powerleap PL-PII is not compatible with older FX based motherboards, eliminating a large portion of the type of user that would need something like the PL-PII. AnandTech tried the PL-PII on three separate FX motherboards, each to no avail. The PL-PII could work if your motherboard manufacturer had BIOS support for the Celeron processor, however even the biggest names in the industry didn’t seem to update their BIOS files with Celeron support upon a quick check around the net. If you own a 440FX-based motherboard, your best bet is to write your motherboard manufacturer asking for an updated BIOS with support for the Celeron.

Other than that, AnandTech didn’t experience any problems with the samples Powerleap sent out. In order to compare the two possibilities for cooling options, one of the samples was outfitted with a standard Intel heatsink/fan combo and the other with a Powerleap branded generic heatsink/fan combo. Both units seemed to run at equal temperatures, however the retail Intel heatsink/fan combo was significantly quieter in operation in comparison to the Powerleap fan, making the Intel combo the ideal option if Powerleap decides to make the option available.



The Test

The Slot-1 Test System Configuration was as follows:

  • Intel Pentium II 300, Intel Pentium II 400, Intel Pentium II 450, Intel Celeron 266, Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Celeron 366, Intel Celeron 400, Powerleap PL-PII 433
  • ABIT BX6 Revision 2
  • 64MB PC100 SDRAM
  • Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
  • Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB)
  • Canopus Pure3D-2 Voodoo2 (12MB) - Glide Tests
  • Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP TNT Video Card (16MB) - OpenGL/Direct3D tests

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

  • Ziff Davis Winstone 98 under Windows 98
  • Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98 & Windows NT4 SP4
  • Quake 2 v3.20 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo
  • Naturally Speaking Professional Speech Recognition Software
  • Microsoft Netshow Encoder
  • Adobe Photoshop 5.02
  • Dispatch by Rage Software w/ SSE support

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color.

For the in-depth gaming performance tests Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo was used to simulate the worst case scenario in terms of Quake 2 performance, the point at which your frame rate will rarely drop any further. In contrast, the demo1.dm2 demo was used to simulate the ideal situation in terms of Quake 2 performance, the average high point for your frame rate in normal play. The range covered by the two benchmarks can be interpreted as the range in which you can expect average frame rates during gameplay.

For complete benchmarks of the Celeron 433 used in the PL-PII 433, visit AnandTechs Intel Celeron 433 Review. As soon as Powerleap supplies AnandTech with final revisions of the PL-PII hardware, Dual Processor tests will be added to the benchmark suite displayed here.

If you happen to have a motherboard that supports the 75MHz FSB, the Powerleap PL-PII 433 overclocks beautifully to 488MHz. For owners of anything slower than a Pentium II 300, youll notice some performance increase when migrating to the PL-PII 433, however not too much if all youre going to be running are business applications such as word processing and spread sheet applications.



Conclusion

Should you buy the Powerleap PL-PII 433? Well, the first thing you need to understand is this. The PL-PII is not your conventional overdrive processor, you should consider it to be a Celeron 433 with a feature filled Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, and nothing more.

Those of you interested in dual processor operation will be pleased by the pre-wired state of the PL-PII for operation in dual processor mode, however expect to spend a little more than you normally would on a Celeron 433 + Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter combo due to the nature of the upgrade.

The smart thing for Powerleap to do would be to sell their Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter separately, unfortunately there is no indication as of yet if they are going to pursue that avenue or not. Users of the Celeron 433 probably wont have any use for the manual adjustment of the processors core voltage, as it cant be overclocked to a speed high enough to require such a tweak (488MHz is quite stable at 2.0v across the board). And support for the 100MHz FSB is out of the question as the Celeron 433 barely makes it up to 541MHz (83.3MHz x 6.5) , much less 650MHz, so in essence, Powerleaps additions to the standard Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter card are virtually useless when packaged with the Celeron 433.

Although they do come, as mentioned before, ready for Dual Processor operation, a number of on-line vendors are already offering the same modifications already made to MSIs own Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter boards.

Powerleap is planning to make the PL-PII available in speeds of 466MHz and 500MHz when those processors are released later this year. One of the beauties of the Powerleap kit is that you can simply pull out the 433 and replace it with a faster Celeron CPU in the future without any problems.

In essence, the Powerleap PL-PII is designed for the novice user who doesnt want to mess with soldering contacts to setup a dual processor system and doesnt want to toy with any part of the upgrade process other than sticking a new processor in their CPU slot. However for most tweakers and AnandTech readers, unless Powerleap makes the card available without the bundled processor, you may want to overlook this upgrade.

Its ironic that the only group of people that would really benefit from an overdrive like the PL-PII are those that are crippled due to a lack of BIOS support from their motherboard manufacturers. This brings up an important question: If you had known, back when the Pentium II 266 went for $1200 and the only 440FX based motherboards available retailed at above $280, that the future of your expensive investment would be a dead endwould you have stuck with Socket-7?

UPDATE - 04/08/99  Powerleap has recently informed AnandTech that they will be selling the adapter by itself, the estimated retail cost for the adapter is $29.95.  Although the the price is a bit higher than most Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapters (which go for about $15), the price is justified by the on-board voltage controls, 66/100MHz FSB forced detection jumper, the ability of the card to run in dual processor configurations without any modifications (two cards are required), and the dual-phase temperature sensing fail-safe system which gradually reduces the clock speed of your processor should the CPU fan fail and your CPU begin to overheat.   If you're at all interested in a Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, the Powerleap PL-PII is probably your best bet, it breaks the barriers that once kept all Celeron 300A owners going back to ABIT for motherboards and does so while adding quite a few new features that are well worth the money.

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