AMD Duron, 1.3 GHz (DHD1300AMT1B) OEM / Unboxed Processor

I thought the price was good for this new cpu chip. It came quite well packaged and I fitted it into my mainboard , no probs.

I had previous;ly flashed my BioS on the mainboard because the original BioS would not support a chip running as fast as this. This is not a problem on newer boards but mine is very old. I was very nervous switching it on for the first time with the new CPU fitted; to see what would happen......or not.

I needn't have worried, both my bios upgrade and the new purchased CPU work a treat. I've doubled and more my CPU performance figures , going from an initial overall "PC Wiz" Rating of 42 to a new high of 87.

The old cpu ran about 32degC. This new one is running about 54degC but , hey , it is twice as quick so what do you expect ?! Maybe I should have coughed up for a new cooler as well ;o)

Thanks, good ebayer, good transaction.

Some while back, I bought a "bare bones" Celeron system box at a bargain price. Adequate for wordprocessing, email and basic office tasks, but not exactly "sporty" in its handling: press the button, and make a cup of tea while you wait for the system to respond. I checked the motherboard maker's website, and found that it could handle CPU's up to 1,000Mhz, or (after flashing the BIOS) up to 1233Mhz. I watched prices on Ebay for a few days... then bid on a couple of 1000Mhz P3's (A friend had also bought a near-identical system box) By buying two, we saved on postage. A flat-bladed screw driver was used to unclip the heatsink, a flick of the lever on the ZIF socket, and out came the Celeron chip, in went the P3. A couple of microswitches on the motherboard needed changing at the same time; back when the heatsink, I powered up the system and... it was like discovering that I'd been driving with the handbrake on. Incomparably better performance: not only in terms of raw "clock cycles" (1,000Mhz instead of 666) but also double the size of on-chip cache. Early Celerons - released to compete with AMD's new "Duron" chips, cut the price by cutting the amount of (expensive) on-chip cache. The consensus at the time was that Intel had cut the cache by too much and the price by not enough... AMD slowly gained market dominance. The difference in "oomph" between a Celeron and a P3 is quite marked.

If you've got a tired Celeron system, this offers an amazingly cheap way to get a substantial increase in performance - but before making any purchases, CHECK WITHE THE MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURERS website; not all P3 chips are compatible with all boards!