🚀 go-pugleaf

I installed a Celeron 500 into a 440LX SOYO SY-6KL motherboard that
sounds a lot like your colleague's ATC-6210.  The 6KL was slow
compared to an Intel 810 motherboard with the same processor at the
same clock speed and amount of system memory.

I think 440LX system performance is seriously impaired by obsolete
technologies built into the 440LX chipset.  Memory bandwidth suffers
due to the 66MHz bus clock.  The 440LX hard drive controller is ATA33.
 The AGP port is AGP 1.0.  The USB connection is USB 1.0 ( 1MB/s).

The best thing to say about most 440LXs is that they are here and
already paid for.

So, let's talk about meaningful improvements now that we know why it
is not a good idea to spend a lot of money upgrading a 440LX.

a)  The best (not overclocked) processor for a 440LX system will be a
PPGA Celeron 533 in a slotket adapter.  And, Celeron 300A's and 333s
are better than Pentium II 333s.

Celeron L-2 cache is part of the processor.  Pentium IIs use external
memory chips that run at half the processor's core speed.  So, a
Celeron's 128KB cache is usually more effective than a Pentium IIs
512KB cache because it is better synchronized to the processor.

I think all Celerons (except engineering samples) are clock multiplier
locked.  So, don't worry about motherboard clock multiplier settings. 
Everything will be fine if the motherboard's bios has been updated to
support Celeron processors.

Overclocking with a 75 MHz clock setting should be safe.  Late
production (from about when Celeron 433s were introduced) PPGA Celeron
cores will usually overclock to about 585 MHz.  Early cores usually
max out around 450 MHz.  So, Celeron 533s (8x multiplier) won't
overclock at 75 MHz, 8 x 75 = 600. But most Celeron 500s will probably
operate as Celeron 563s.

Your colleague may have an 83 MHz clock option but using it will put
the PCI bus so far out of specification as to endanger the hard drive
and other components.

The 440LX PCI clock is half of the system clock.  66/2 = 33, the
standard PCI clock.  75/2 = 37.5, a little more than 10% faster than
the design specification and usually no problem.  83/2 = 41.5, or
almost 25% faster than the PCI bus is supposed to be clocked at and
many hardware failures were reportedly caused by operating at out of
spec clock rates.

Oh!  And the 440LX AGP clock is the system clock.  So, some video
cards generate corrupted graphics when the system is overclocked.

b)  Use good memory.  Try to find memory that can operate at 222
timings.  333 memory timings are worse at low clock speeds because the
time interval between clocks is longer.  The 128MB DIMMs are probably
the better idea.  Minimizing the amount of virtual memory should help
a lot.  256 MBs of system memory should be enough for a Windows 9x
system.

c) I hope your colleage has an open PCI slot.  Updating to an ATA66,
or higher, hard drive controller will really improve system
performance (if you have ATA66, or higher hard drives).  I recently
figured out that people think SCSI is faster than IDE because Intel
motherboard chipset built-in hard drive controllers were slow ATA33
until the 810 chipset boards introduced ATA66.

d)  I think your colleague should ignore most USB hardware.  The
440LX's built-in USB 1.0 offers 1 MB/sec bandwidth.  A USB 1.1 PCI
card would provide 11 MB/sec bandwidth.  A USB 2.0 PCI card would
offer more than 450 MB/sec.

I bought a USB 2.0 card because my USB 1.1 webcam seemed slow on my
motherboard's USB 1.0 port.  The webcam works much better now that it
has the bandwidth it needs. (A 1.1 adapter would have worked as well,
but the price was right.)

e)  There is no cure for the AGP 1.0 limitation.  But poor performance
is not the biggest thing to worry about.  New AGP cards have reduced
voltage requirements and increased current requirements.  So, putting
the wrong video card on your colleague's motherboard could be deadly
to the video card.

I recommend upgrading to a PCI video card.   Even the original nVidia
Riva TnT video cards had problems on some 440LX boards.  (serious
people installed jumpers to get enough voltage from the power
connector to the AGP ports)  Or, stay obsolete.  I like my
Accelgraphics Permedia2 cards as long as I don't try to play modern 3D
video games.

Good Luck