Powerleap PL-PII 433

There were a few issues AnandTech experienced with the PL-PII upgrades that kept Powerleap from receiving the perfect install recommendation. Keep in mind that the samples AnandTech received were purely engineering samples and were absolutely not ready for retail sale.

The first problem AnandTech ran into was that the preliminary written documentation and the markings on the PCB itself did not correspond to the actual settings to get the processors working at their full capacity. It seemed as if the settings in the manual were physically reversed from what they should have been, luckily AnandTech was assured that this would be corrected in the final shipping product, so no worries thus far.

After figuring out which jumpers to set for the CPU to operate at a 2.0v core and 66MHz FSB (100MHz x 6.5, as you can probably guess, is not a viable option for the Celeron 433, although many of us wish it were), AnandTech ran into another problem. The samples AnandTech received had pin B21, the pin that corresponds to whether or not the CPU is a 66 or 100MHz FSB unit, set to high, or 100MHz FSB by default. This meant that the CPU attempted to run at 100MHz x 6.5 in any BX board it was placed in, a bit unfortunate, however after a few email exchanges between Powerleap and AnandTech, the problem was found out to be isolated to the samples being tested. Once again, Powerleap assured AnandTech that the case was isolated and that the shipping models would not have this problem. Everything still seems ok here.

Here’s where the real problems set in. It’s plainly unfair to call the PL-PII an overdrive processor, simply because it does not uphold the primary overdrive goal, which has always been to achieve 100% backwards compatibility with older systems. If you remember back to the release of the Celeron processor, one of its major faults was that it was completely incompatible with motherboards based on the very first Slot-1 chipset, the Intel 440FX or Natoma chipset. This left many users in the dust, as 440FX boards were the only things available for those that went out and purchased the Pentium II during the first few months of its introduction. Just as you’d expect, the Powerleap PL-PII is not compatible with older FX based motherboards, eliminating a large portion of the type of user that would need something like the PL-PII. AnandTech tried the PL-PII on three separate FX motherboards, each to no avail. The PL-PII could work if your motherboard manufacturer had BIOS support for the Celeron processor, however even the biggest names in the industry didn’t seem to update their BIOS files with Celeron support upon a quick check around the net. If you own a 440FX-based motherboard, your best bet is to write your motherboard manufacturer asking for an updated BIOS with support for the Celeron.

Other than that, AnandTech didn’t experience any problems with the samples Powerleap sent out. In order to compare the two possibilities for cooling options, one of the samples was outfitted with a standard Intel heatsink/fan combo and the other with a Powerleap branded generic heatsink/fan combo. Both units seemed to run at equal temperatures, however the retail Intel heatsink/fan combo was significantly quieter in operation in comparison to the Powerleap fan, making the Intel combo the ideal option if Powerleap decides to make the option available.