Can the dinosaur still champ?

Hey all, I'm running a 5yr old Dell Insp. 5150 that's needed to go all day battery for college. After some heavy tweaks and a new 96wHr battery I've hit 5hrs but the med skool day is longer than that.
The questions: I'm running a mobileP4 3.06ghz (noHT) rated at 70w max. Is it feasible to swap to a 30w Celeron or another socket 478 mPGA? Also, would it really help if I'm already cutting the speed to 1.6ghz?
Thanks!

 

probably not too much........why don't you just buy another battery and swap it in when hte other one runs out............means you could up the frequency again.........

 

A Celeron processor would actually make it WORSE. Those are not capable of downclocking, and may not undervolt, which your processor can and does both.

 

Like Jeff said, the only thing you can really do is get an extra battery. Five hours on a Pentium 4 is amazing as it is.

 

So celeron's are looking like the most inflexible things ever created (forget I brought it up)... After some looking at the Intel Processor Spec Finder, it looks like they have some Pentium M's, Core Solo, and Core Duo's that still run socket 478. Since these show half my wattage, is it possible to swap out? Also, I might be limited by the Dell A38 bios.

 

Those CPUs use a different socket from the P4. In terms of lowering CPU power consumption, all you can do is make the processor run at the lowest frequency and voltage.

 

your cpu has a 533Mhz FSB, and in my recollection, it is a 478B processor, meaning its for laptops. You cant put a desktop chip in their cause of pin differences. I think the slowest processor you can put in your system is a 2.4Ghz one, but still that may only give you another 10 minutes of battery life, cause I believe it is rated for 65 watts.

I would go for a second battery, or just bring the ac power adaptor with you.
A lot of kids at my college run on battery all day, and than half way through class their system shuts down cause of low battery. I for a reason always sit near a power outlet, cause I have 40 minutes of battery life

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the input here. I'm not too familiar with intel sockets and compatibility. In good news tho, one of my roommates just ordered a new HP TX2510. Can't wait to see how the Puma platform does against Montevina. AMD really needs to go 45nm and double the L2 cache AGAIN before things catch up.