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Bringing up my Vectra XM to slightly higher spec

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First post, by c0d3r3d

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Hi all! Thought I'd start off my first post here with a little story and a question.

A couple of days ago while hunting for some capacitors to replace some broken ones with at work, I stumbled across an old HP Vectra XM 5/133 PC sitting around doing nothing. I asked my manager if I could take it, and he said yes! Took it home, booted it up, and it works perfectly. Installed 98SE on it, and now I'm looking at upgrading it a bit so I can play my old games on it.

So far, it's got 32MB EDO RAM, a Pentium 133, a Diamond Multimedia 3D Stealth 2000 Pro (2MB) and an SB16 PnP. I'm looking at upgrading the processor and GPU. I've found a few GPUs on eBay at a decent price (an X1300 pro 256MB for £13.50 or a Radeon 7000 64MB for £10) and I'm looking into what CPUs are compatible.

I don't have a lot of knowledge on these AT systems, so I was wondering if I could, like on an ATX system, just drop in a CPU with the correct voltage and socket type and be off with it. I've found a K6-2 350MHz CPU that will fit the socket, but I don't know if it's compatible. Is there anything I have to look out for, like bus speeds, etc?

Thanks for your help,
Aidan.

TL;DR: Would a K6-2 350 fit in a Pentium 133 system and still work?

Reply 1 of 2, by BSA Starfire

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Both those graphics card you mention are far beyond a socket7 system. The Radeon X1300 is a PCI-E card, so that'ss no good for sure.
And no, a CPU swap requires you to set the jumpers for voltage, FSB and multiplier. So first thing is to find the motherboard manual, see what CPU it can support then go from there. The Diamond graphics S3 Virge is about as good as your gonna get, perhaps add a 3DFX voodoo 1 or 2 or Power VR card for 3D.
*edit*
Best CPU your system will support is a Intel Pentium 200 after a quick google search. TBH I'd leave it as it is. Pretty nice 1995 era PC.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME

Reply 2 of 2, by c0d3r3d

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Oh, yeah, so it is. Oops :p (I searched "pci graphics card" on ebay with the quotes but i guess some odd ones still leak through 😖)

I was more looking at the overkill cards because they're a lot cheaper than the Voodoo cards (as I say, the 7000 goes for £9 but a Voodoo 2/3 goes for over £40 😖) but I can always wait to see what else pops up on eBay over time. About the CPU, it's not the Pentium Pro 200 but the Pentium 200 w/MMX, right?

Again, thanks for your help, I'm useless with really old tech (2000s and onwards is my thing :p).

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