HANDS ON GUIDE

Upgrade your CPU

Price:

Pentium E2160 - £42.95;

Core 2 Quad Q6600 - £150.27;

Supplier: www.scan.co.uk

What you need: Motherboard based on an Intel 965 or 975 chipset that supports VRD 11.0, floppy disk drive or bootable USB thumb drive, research skills.

Depending on your PC's current setup, a CPU upgrade could double its performance, and in many cases, you may not need to replace your motherboard to do it. We've focused on Socket LGA775 boards and Core 2 CPUs here, but our advice applies to Socket AM2 boards too. If you've had your board for a year or two, you may be surprised at what recent updates can do for it.

1. Motherboard vendors often design their boards with a degree of upgradability in mind (provided, of course, that AMD and Intel's new CPUs don't require new hardware), so BIOS updates released after a board has gone on sale can expand the number of CPUs it supports. To determine the quickest CPU that your board can support, visit your motherboard manufacturer's website. We've listed links to the big manufacturers' sites in the 'CPU support' box opposite. You then need to track down the relevant BIOS update.

2. While Intel's Core 2 processors use the same LGA775 socket as later Pentium 4 chips, this doesn't necessarily mean that you can install one in any LGA775 motherboard. To add to the confusion, the compatibility issues involved have more to do with the motherboard than the chipset.

In theory, a Core 2 can be controlled by a 965 or 975X chipset, or even an older 945 model, but you'll need to perform some research into your motherboard's capabilities before taking the plunge. This is because Core 2 chips require a lower voltage than Intel's previous NetBurst chips, and this was laid down in the VRD (voltage regulator-down) 11.0 standard. If your motherboard features this voltage circuitry, you should be able to chuck out your old Pentium 4 and replace it with a shiny new Core 2. Finding out whether your motherboard supports VRD 11.0 can be hard work, but if the specs for the latest BIOS state that it 'adds support for Core 2 Extreme QX6800' then you're on safe ground.

3. Once you've downloaded your new BIOS, you'll need the appropriate flash utility to install it. Details of the utility you need will be on the motherboard manufacturer's website. Some boards support flashing with a Windows utility - either from the manufacturer, or WinFlash (www.ecs.com.tw/extra/flashutl/winflash.htm). If this isn't an option for your board, you need to get into DOS. You can use a floppy drive, or make a USB thumb drive into a virtual floppy drive using HP's Drive Key utility (http://tinyurl.com/2bzkc8). The only problem with making a virtual USB floppy disk is that you still need access to a real floppy disk to create it.

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