🚀 go-pugleaf

Several months ago I upgraded an old Dell 486DX2-50 using an upgrade chip
from Evergreen Technologies (http://www.evertech.com, I think).  It is a
clock-quadrupling 486 chip based on AMD's 5x86-133 processor that supports
write-back caching.  (Forget about AMD's clever "586" name.  The chip's a
486, not a pentium.)  It cost around US$100, about 45-50 percent cheaper
than Intel's P83 Overdrive chip.  Evergreen and AMD claim the chip performs
comparably to a P75.  It also has a built-in voltage regulator and fits
into a 168/169-pin socket.

DX2-50's use a 25 MHz system bus, so quadrupling that would operate the 586
at 100 MHz.  My motherboard (it's actually my three-year-old son's
machine), however, has a jumper which permits me to set the system bus to
33 MHz, so I get the full benefit of the 133 MHz chip.  Yours may, too.  On
a 40 MHz board, the chip triples the clock and runs at 120 MHz, but I
believe that with the faster bus, that would actually be an improvement
over a quadrupled 33 MHz bus. The whole job took me about 15 minutes.

Intel's chip is a true 64-bit Pentium, but a 486 motherboard's system bus
is only 32 bits wide anyway, so you really wouldn't benefit from that. 
Also, the Intel product requires a 237/238-pin socket.  I didn't do any
hardcore benchmarking before or after the upgrade save for the utility disk
that comes with the chip, which reported a performance improvement of about
110 percent.  The increased speed is more than noticeable to me.  It's
amazing how resource-intensive kiddie games have become!

BTW, there's a good article on upgrading 486's at
http://www5.zdnet.com/cshopper/content/9609/cshp0015.html.
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Jim Kangosj�rvi <Jim.Kangosjarvi@Abc.se> wrote in article
<5sk1qb$lpv$1@oden.abc.se>...
> Hi.
> 
> Which is the best processor i can upgrade a IBM Aptiva 486 DX2, 50 MHZ
> (2144-855, SL-C) with?
> The sockel for the processor seems to be one row smaller than a common
one.
> Please send me mail if you know with what i can upgrade it with, (the
type
> of
> processor).
> 
> 
> Thanks, Jim