AcceleraPCI Review
Overclocking AcceleraPCI
You might be wondering how this thing can be
overclocked? After all, doesn't it run on a 33Mhz PCI bus? Well, yes and no. It
does send it's information to the video card and other devices on the PCI bus
but all the important stuff is on the upgrade card itself. Remember, this thing
is like a self contain motherboard. It has its own ZX chipset and a CPU
Softmenu!
This is the cooler AcceleraPCI should have came
with! :-)
To overclock the AcceleraPCI, I removed the
small factory cooler, which gets very hot, and replaced it with a big Global Win
FEP32 supplied by AMK
Services. I had to move some of the IDE cables to give some room for the big
cooler. Lucky the AcceleraPCI has the CPU on top of the card. Otherwise the
Global Win would be block off all the PCI slots!
To enter the AcceleraPCI Softmenu, you hit F1
on bootup. This brings up the AcceleraPCI's BIOS where you can change the bus
speed, multiplier and voltage. You can chose from bus speeds of 66, 75, 83, 100,
103, 112 and 133Mhz. Multipliers range from 2.5 to 8 and voltage can be adjusted
from 2 to 2.3V. Here are the results of the overclocking test:
-
66 x 7 = 466Mhz 100% stable at 2V
-
75 x 7 = 525Mhz 100% stable at 2V
-
83 x 7 = 580Mhz 100% stable at 2.2V
-
100 x 7 = 700Mhz Blank screen.
Not bad at all! 580Mhz is pretty fast for
most people. The Celeron that came in the AcceleraPCI had a very good core.
However the Quake 3 performance didn't improve all that much if at all because
of the Banshee video card. The AcceleraPCI is very stable as an overclocking
device. I put some Celeron 366s into it and it allowed all of them to run on the
103Mhz bus without problems using default voltage.
Summing it up
For someone looking for a nice easy to
install upgrade, the AcceleraPCI might be just what you are looking for.
Do-it-yourselfers may want to do a normal upgrade, with a new motherboard, CPU,
etc. You'll save yourself quite a bit of money.
Why is the AcceleraPCI so expensive? Is
Evergreen just trying to rip you off? Not really. The main reason for the high
cost of the AcceleraPCI is the SODIMM RAM. Those RAM cost more than twice as
much as PC-100 RAM. That would add about $135 to the cost of the $300 ZM6
upgrade I talked about in the first page. That brings the upgrade cost to $435,
bring it closer to the cost of the AcceleraPCI. The problem for Evergreen is you
don't need SODIMM RAM with a normal ZX motherboard. So we have this huge price
gap between the AcceleraPCI and a normal upgrade.
When all is said and done, I just couldn't
get over the price difference. $200 is just too big a gap. For $300, you can get
an Abit ZM6, Celeron 466 and 128 Megs of PC-100 RAM and still have $200 left
over for a new case (if you need one) and a nice AGP TNT2 video card. Let's not
forget that you don't get AGP with the AcceleraPCI so you won't be able to
upgrade to a Geforce later on. Because the AcceleraPCI is to be installed in
older Pentium class machines, chances are you won't get ATA 33/66 support
either. Given all this, doing a normal upgrade with a motherboard swap makes
more sense.
However, if the thought of putting a computer
together makes you shake and you're not put off by the price difference between
the AcceleraPCI and a normal upgrade, then by all means go for it. Then again,
you can also pay someone to upgrade your comp for you. I doubt it will cost
$200.
The Goods
-
Easy to install
-
Overclockable
The Bads
Our Rating: 7/10
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