Failure!

I put a socket 370 Pentium 3 800Mhz into my Presario 1200US, which had come with a Celeron 800Mhz. It booted, but videos (youtube, etc.) were garbled and the fan seemed to come on a lot. I didn't notice an improvement in performance. The line graph in Windows Task Mgr. showed just as much cpu usage as with the Celeron

 

Before the days of SpeedStep, the only difference between equivalently clocked PIIIs and Celerons was the amount of L2 cache. Depending on what Celeron you had and what PIII you got, the only difference between the two chips could be a measly 128KB of L2.

 

Good thing it only cost me $5 :/

 

You serious? Lol, good deal.

Anyway, did you get the same sort of performance with the Celeron? Were Youtube videos garbled and messed up as with the Pentium?

 

Did you use thermal grease / paste? That's what I think of when you say the fans are coming on a lot..

 

Maybe you got something running on your notebook eating all your CPU and RAM. You could also check for proper application of thermal paste since it sounds like it's getting a bit too hot.

 

I didn't have the correct stuff, so I just used a dab of really thick automotive chassis lube. The heat sink runs the span of the keyboard and was quite hot, so heat was transferring.
I was just getting the occasional choppy video with the Celeron. With the P3, the video was sort of pinkish pixelized blocks. Completely unwatchable.
I turned off every service and app I think I can.
The laptop didn't want to completely boot the first time with the P3. I started it in safe mode and it ran for a while, then hung up, so I then started in in normal mode and seemed to run ok, except for the fan coming on sooner and longer than normal and the video clips being unwatchable. Could the chip just be bad? I reinstalled the Celeron and everything was back to normal.
My goal is just to keep the old Presario running. The poor hinges broke long ago. I have a clamp holding the screen together and upright
As soon as the usb-ide adapter arrives, I'll be installing a new massive 20 gig HD in place of the 10 year old 10 gig

 

There is your problem, pray it doesn't kill your notebook.

 

I would expect some improvement in performance, but as it is an 800MHz P3 is still not enough to power Flash-based applications, which tend to be very CPU-intensive. Even Intel's 1.6GHz Atom CPUs have trouble with YouTube in certain cases, so your P3 is not very promising.

If you're running XP, I would suggest that you possibly lower the demand on the CPU by switching to Windows 2000 or 98. If those alternatives are unacceptable to you, then the only thing you can do is to tweak XP as much as possible and to remove any unnecessary start up programs.

Good luck.

 

You think the tiny drop of lube was the problem?
I really don't see how. When I removed the P3, the chip was barely warm and the heat sink was hot, so heat was transferring. Also, what paste was there from the factory was dried and gone. Maybe I should reapply some paste to the Celeron?

 

Regarding the issue of heat, using thick automotive lubricant is not advisable since it functions primarily as a lubricant, not as a medium designed for heat transfer. That's what thermal compound is especially made for.

 

I think it's more like this:

Credit for this one goes to one of the moderators. Can't remember which one posted it. I think it may have been Commander Wolf.