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42088
March 16th, 2010 20:00
Upgrading a Dell Dimension 9100 CPU
Hi,
Iv'e been looking around for a new cpu for my Dell Dimension 9100 (bios A03 2006) for sometime and am becoming more and more confused. Currently it has a 3Ghz Prescott Pentium 4 which is starting to show its age. Ive heard (loose) rumors that people have taken core 2 duo's and installed them in their 9100's and although they get an incompatible cpu screen, they click F1 and the computer works fine, is this believable/possible?
I was also looking at a Pentium E5300 which seems to be a decently good, cheap processor. Is it supported?
Kinda my last resort would be the Pentium D 940 which seems to be a newer pentium D, im guessing it was released after 2006, would it still work because it is a Pentium D which the computer is supposed to support?
Finally, is the cpu also limited by the motherboard? I think i have heard that my motherboard (X8582 945P chipset) only supports 2MB of cache on the Cpu, is that possible? What happens if i install a cpu with more than that? Also, does the FSB speed matter when buying a cpu? ie, can i only get a cpu with 800mhz FSB or can i get something higher?
I wouldnt be against to experimenting with cpu's but i can't buy a new motherboard, case and cpu. Sorry for all the questions,
Thanks,
Evan
jmrusso
9 Posts
0
March 23rd, 2010 21:00
Hello,
I read two success stories about installing a E6600 in a Dimension 9100. I have a Dimension 9100 with a prescot and I am turning it into a media server and home theater PC. I upgraded to A03 and I tried with a E6600 from a friend. My 9100 did not POST and had a steady amber light in the power button with the E6600 in it (according to Dell support is an unsupported CPU or other unsupported hardware).
About the cache limitation I dont know but I do know that your FSB is going to be your bottle neck no matter how fast FSB CPU you install provided is supported.
I have read that to get another motherboard (i.e. a 9200 replacement mobo) you will have to modify the case's windows in the back (the ports of the mobo doesnt correspond to the 9100 case).
Let me know if you find a way to get a core 2 duo to work. I think I am going to settle for a 940
Juan
graham.k
26 Posts
0
March 24th, 2010 06:00
I would not expect the Pentium E5300 to work with a 945 family chipset. IMHO you should stick with an Allendale or Conroe processor. I'm not aware of any reason why there should be a 2MB cache size limit, but I do know that your board won't support front-side bus speeds greater than 1066MT/s.
You should definitely apply the most recent system BIOS update before installing a new processor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_Dual-Core_microprocessors
Pentium D's would definitely work, but they're not spectacularly good performers, and they run very hot.
FWIW, I have a G41-based system with an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2220 (2.40GHz/800FSB/1MB) and would like to put a newer processor in it someday...
jmrusso
9 Posts
0
June 29th, 2010 10:00
I upated the BIOS and tried with the CPU of another system that had an E6600 and it didnt work. Some other post I read the BIOS was replaced/flashed with a version system that supports the CPU which I am not going to do (too much risk for a HTPC). I bought a 940 that performs significally better than the P4 but as you said runs hot but with no problems. Since my system is in another room away from the TV the noise of the fans are not an issue.
Thanks for you time,
Juan
salvia
11 Posts
0
June 18th, 2011 07:00
Seeing that Dell will never update some BIOSes again, I'll tell you this. You can replace/update CPU microcode in the BIOS yourself with the microcode for the CPU you want to use. For example, to add support for the E6700 processor, you'd take one of the three "cpu0001067a_plat000000**_ver00000a0b_date20100928.bin" files (** is a0, 11 or 44 from the latest Intel microcode.dat). Open the BIOS.hdr (not the BIOS.exe) in a hex editor like HxD. Copy all the text from the new cpu.bin microcode file apart from the first 48 characters (bytes 49-8192) and replace any one of the existing 8 KB CPU microcodes in the BIOS with the new microcode. Update the existing index to "7A 06 01 00 ## ## ## ## 52 45 41 48" (## is the pointer to the actual microcode, so leave it as is). You also need to fix a CRC32 or two (fakecrc in cmdpack works pretty well) and then flash the gzipped BIOS.hdr by booting to FreeDOS or stuff the .hdr to the .exe and run it in Windows.