While FC-PGA CPUs are flip-chips just like the Athlons, they are far, far more robust. Yes, it's possible to crack them, but no, unless you are utterly reckless, it's not going to happen accidentally.

As for the speed boost, 256kB L2 cache beats 128kB, but the big drawback of the Celeron Coppermines was the low FSB. However the Celeron 800 ran at 100MHz (as opposed to the 66MHz of older Celerons) so this was less of an issue. The delta with those P3s depends on the bus speed. If they're 100MHz FSB parts (Pentium3-800E or 1000E), the difference will be fairly small. If they're 133MHz FSB parts (Pentium3-800EB or 1000EB), the difference will be quite large.

But as for risks: fix those caps, and all other caps of the same type on the board. If they go, they might take a lot more with them. I've seen Via ApolloPro133A boards with holes melted in them from MOSFETs that melt down after getting out-of-spec input because of dead caps.

Thanks for the info @dionb!
I checked, in the description of the 1Ghz Pentium 3 it says: "1000/256/133/1.75V"
The seller says it has two of them, one made in Malay and the other in Philippines.
So i presume they're 133Mhz FSB CPUs, right? The seller hasn't posted any picture and no other info it is given.
I'll send a message and ask for a photo. 😀

Yeah I know, I'm searching for good caps locally, I don't feel like waiting for weeks getting them from China.

Are Intel CPUs as fragile?

If you worry about the damage, buy thin silicon pads or make pads from paper (multiple paper strips glued together). Place them around the crystal and you're good to go.

Yes, that P3 1GHz uses a 133MHz FSB.
One thing you could try with your Celeron 800 is overclocking it to 133MHz FSB which will make it 1066MHz. I have a Celeron 900 that works fine at 1200MHz, though I don't run it at that speed all the time, only for certain games. As always, overclocking depends on the silicon lottery. You could try it out first to see if it helps with a game you felt was too slow before deciding to buy a real P3.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not comfortable with overclocking old hardware, especially now that I have the problem with caps. 😀

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-01-20, 01:13:

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not comfortable with overclocking old hardware, especially now that I have the problem with caps. 😀

Again, fix that first of all.

Putting in a P3-1000EB will stress the motherboard voltage regulators (the things you know are failing!) more than overclocking the Celeron 800 to 1066MHz. You really, really don't want to keep running that system in this state.

As everybody else says, get the capacitors fixed first off ..

Next, yes, a PIII at same or higher speed will "always" outperform the Celeron. Even if they are 100 MHz parts - the double cache has even greater impact on a CPU with low FSB bandwidth. That is the performance gap from a Celeron 800/100 to a PIII 800/100 will be higher than from Celeron 800/133 (if that had existed, of course) to a PIII 800/133.

Re: capacitors. If your two options are "buy them from China" or "buy them at a local place that is holding on to a hope, a prayer, and the five people in town who still know a bare circuit board is not (necessarily) an explosive device", then you might as well list the board on Ebay and take up knitting. 😉

I might be mistaken, but I'm assuming "from China" means some bargain specials with names that are just made up groups of letters, and "local" means stuff bought from a Tandy/RadioShack liquidation sale five years ago, with unknown and most likely lackluster specs, sold at a 50x markup.

Why bother repairing something unless you can get quality components? Do you not have access to an online parts house? (Other than Alibaba, I mean.)

Yeah,
pretty much "from China" means from Aliexpress. They sell cheap caps, and I'll try to find someone with good feedback score.
I've searched locally, where I live (Rome,IT), there are only a few places that you can go and buy, and all what I've tried sell cheap Chinese caps for somewhat acceptable prices (about 50-70 cents / each). Basically you get the same you would get from China at a slightly higher price but you get them immediately.
The other option is Mouser... I checked the prices, its like 2-3 euros per cap!
Yes, good quality caps, but still, I need to replace like 20, the prices go up really quickly. I'm currently still thinking what to do...
I've put the motherboard in storage for now, and I've replaced with a similar one.
Has anybody any experience with this?
Where did you get your caps from??? Thanks in advance.

Hm, that doesn't sound right from Mouser. I buy from Digi-Key, but same difference. A lot of boards I've had to repair use 1000uF 6.3V caps, 3.5mm pitch on the legs. The last order I placed was for something like 20, 25 of them. At that quantity, Nichicon PN: UHE0J102MPD (DK#493-1467-ND) is $0.258 apiece. Shipping may hit you a little harder, as it's pretty much a flat $9.00 to me. I always have other stuff I need anyway, which helps spread the cost a little.

Looking at mouser.it, their prices are not out of line with the rest of the company, nor out of line with the rest of the industry. Some larger caps or specialized caps can get more expensive.

If you're not sure what you need for parts, definitely ask. We can try to help you select suitable replacements.

I have a similar question.
In my case, I have a Celeron 900 MHz (100 MHz FSB) on a Gigabyte GA-6VxC7-4X Socket 370 motherboard.
I'm thinking of swopping it out with an Intel Pentium III 733 MHz (133 MHz FSB).
I presume that the Pentium III 733 MHz will outperform the Celeron 900 MHz? I haven't done any benchmarks yet.

@jesolo I found a page with some benchmarks: http://hw-museum.cz/article/6/cpu-history-tou … 1999---2001-/12
The closest CPUs to your candidates are a Celeron 533A@800 (so Coppermine 100MHz FSB) and a Pentium III 866. The Celeron 900 and Pentium III 733 would have a +12.5% and -8.5% clock speed difference, respectively. Eyeballing the results on that page, it does look like it would be a performance upgrade but IMHO not significant enough. Assuming you have good caps on your motherboard and good silicon in the Celeron 900, I'd try overclocking it to 1200 like I did with mine. YMMV of course.

jesolo wrote on 2020-01-21, 06:48:

I presume that the Pentium III 733 MHz will outperform the Celeron 900 MHz? I haven't done any benchmarks yet.

Why not run them both in a couple of benchmarks and report back here ? The Pentium III has the advantage of fsb 133 and more cache, the Celeron has the advantage of more raw speed. I suspect that 'what outperforms what' depends on which type of application/benchmark software they are run.

Tom's Hardware published a comparison article long ago but that was in the period from before the Celeron fsb 100:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/performa … uide,213-6.html

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-01-20, 20:13:

Yeah, pretty much "from China" means from Aliexpress. They sell cheap caps, and I'll try to find someone with good feedback scor […]
Show full quote

Yeah,
pretty much "from China" means from Aliexpress. They sell cheap caps, and I'll try to find someone with good feedback score.
I've searched locally, where I live (Rome,IT), there are only a few places that you can go and buy, and all what I've tried sell cheap Chinese caps for somewhat acceptable prices (about 50-70 cents / each). Basically you get the same you would get from China at a slightly higher price but you get them immediately.
The other option is Mouser... I checked the prices, its like 2-3 euros per cap!
Yes, good quality caps, but still, I need to replace like 20, the prices go up really quickly. I'm currently still thinking what to do...
I've put the motherboard in storage for now, and I've replaced with a similar one.
Has anybody any experience with this?
Where did you get your caps from??? Thanks in advance.

Depends on quantities. Mouser is great if you are buying enough to justify their steep shipping costs. However I usually don't buy that much, and then I prefer a European source. Reichelt is generally where I shop. They're German, but have local websites in quite a few countries - including .it by the look of it:
https://www.reichelt.com/it/it/

That said, I can't imagine a place like Roma won't have some real electronics shops somewhere.

@dionb , Thank you for your suggestion!
Yeah I think you're right, I need to better check prices based by the exact capacitance and voltage I need. I just did a quick research at Mouser(.it) and was immediately put off by the prices. I will definitively give a look at Reichelt. I'm not a very technical guy when it comes to Capacitors, I only know a few Japanese brands, and can tell the capacitance of a cap if I can use Google 😀

Yeah, to all local places I've been they only sell Chinese caps, maybe if you ask them they can provide, but since they're asking 50-70 cents for a Chinese one I can only immagine how much they'll charge. Maybe someone from Italy knows better?