The Upgrade Joke

Ever since the days of yore (read: 486), CPU upgradability has been pushed as a great incentive for investing early in a PC - when the next generation of processor arrives, all you'd have to do is open the case, pry out the CPU, and pop in a new processor! While an elegant solution, the reality never materialized, for several reasons.

Price and timing were large factors in why this is the case. When a new processor is released, it's often double the cost of the mid-high range CPU it replaces. For the relatively meager performance increase 50Mhz yields, it's almost never worth the bother. When an upgrade providing a substantial increase in performance does become available, it usually requires additional infrastructure change, or comes at a time when carrying over the excess baggage of other obsolete components would dilute the effects of the new CPU.

Case in point: Those who purchased P2-300s or 333s a little while back had probably hoped to be able to upgrade to 400 or 450 later in the year as new processors came out. However, with these new chips came the 100Mhz FSB (Front Side Bus), requiring a brand new motherboard and PC100 DIMM RAM as well. Similarly, those looking to buy a Pentium II now and upgrade to Katmai in early '99 should note that by the time Katmai's performance gains justify a switch, it's very likely that the 133Mhz Camino chipset will be available, and perhaps even required. A new chipset means a new motherboard, and the higher bus speed of 133Mhz will require new RAM, the two distinct possibilities being Rambus RDRAM and DDR SDRAM.

At this point, it looks like the only currently feasible upgrade solution comes from the hard-working folks at AMD. Their upcoming K6-3 CPU (described below) is designed to be Super7-compatible, and for the most part equals the performance of a similarly clocked Pentium II for most tasks. If you've bought a K6-2 300 or greater, with a decent Super7 motherboard, then it's very likely that with a simple BIOS revision, your motherboard will fully support the new K6-3 in early '99. While this isn't definite, it's a much safer bet than any other.