K6-2 2.2v work at 2.5v?

[Nighthawk]

I've got a Socket 7 machine currently running a K6-233, and I'd like to upgrade it. I know that the K6-2 CPUs remap the 2x multiplier to 6x, but the lowest voltage the BIOS will let me use is 2.5v.

Would the K6-2 work fine with 2.5v and a large heatsink, or will it fry?

[Buzioid]

It should work fine, just lessen the life of the CPU and increase heat. What motherboard is this that only lets you go to 2.5v?

[Nighthawk]

It's an old Abit 430TX board.. Back then I guess the main thing to design around was the 2.8v for the Pentium MMX or something.

I just found an article about a guy who changed a resistor on the board so the 2.5 setting would actually provide 2.2 (http://ce.et.tudelft.nl/~robbert/per...t/upgrade.html), but I didn't want to have to solder anything

[elroy]

Nearly all of the early boards had settings of 2.8, 2.9 and 3.2 Then some adopted the 2.5. It wasn't until AMD put out the later K6-2 chips that they started settings of 2.0 and 2.2
I remember the early PC Chips 571 boards only had 2.5 and up but the later revisions of the 571 had a 2.2 setting.
There is the possibility that your board has settings that aren't marked. Try running a search for "undocumented settings" on your board name and model #.

[Eladijaz]

Hi NH,
That upgrade should be fine. I have done a few for customers and had none come back. You might not be able to get up to rated speed for the higher k62s tho.
Also remember that the TX boards will only cache 64mb of RAM (or 128mb for the 1mb cache boards) so performance doesn't increase a hell of a lot with more than 64mb ... in fact it, in some configurations, it will decrease.
Regards,
Elad.