Hi,

I have a Packard Bell iMedia 1507 PC and I am considering upgrading the processor.
The motherboard is an NEC Santiago P5S800-VM. [With 2gb ram.]
The processor type I have been looking at is the Pentium D 9xx series.
I know that the socket is the same, what I am trying to find out is if everything else on the motherboard can take the extra performance? Also, would I need to change anything else?
I believe that the processor comes complete with a heat-sink and a fan, could someone tell me if that is so.

Thanks,
pilgrim.

The things to check for regarding motherboard compatibility are the front side bus and supported memory speeds. Judging by the model number, it looks like your board has an 800MHz front side bus (FSB). Try searching the NEC web site for details of what processor speeds it supports - you'll probably need a BIOS update (if there is one available) in order to support the speed that you want to run at.

Regarding the heat sink and fan, Intel processors are sold in two packaging formats - an OEM processor is just a processor, whereas the full retail picture box (sometimes referred to as Fully Packaged Product) will include the heatsink and fan.

Hope that helps

You can also upgrade your memory to the max speeds supported (ie pc3200, pc5400 etc.)

Hi, thanks for your replies. Sorry it took so long to get back to you.

Since I posted I have learned that my motherboard will not take a Pentium D.
I have also learned that while it shows up in System Information as an NEC Board it is in fact made by ASUS.
Where I have got to so far is to look at another ASUS board, the P5P800-VM which is the same size as mine and does support Pentium D, it also takes DDR memory which I shall move from my existing board. [I already use PC3200.]

What seems to be a bigger problem is software, a great deal of it was pre-installed including XP. Apart from what is on the hard drive the only other copies I have are on the Master Recovery Disk or backups created with Norton Ghost, [on an external hard drive]. A friend has a Windows XP disk which I have used to carry out an XP repair but I cannot do a complete install from it as the license key is different.
If it is necessary I will have to buy another copy of XP, but it would be nice if I could use what I have.

Looks like I still have a lot of head scratching to do.

pilgrim.

Here's a little gem of information that I have kept since I first read it on the D-A-L forums:

Before you swap out the current motherboard go to device manager and select the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and select your current storage controller. Right click, select update driver and select install from a list or specific location. Click don't search I will choose the driver to install and select the standard dual channel IDE controller.

This will prevent the inaccessable boot device blue screen. I have done this multiple times on different platforms with no problems.

Also I found that booting the first time with the new motherboard is best done in the Safe mode where XP will install the drivers it needs and at the same time you can install the new motherboard drivers from its CD.

This saved me doing a repair or a reinstall of XP. My whole system came right up and worked great and very stable.

I can't suggest any kind of guarantee that that works but it certainly sounds good.

Thanks for that, I've made a copy.

pilgrim.