Abit BH6 and Celeron II 566

A Love Story

Da' Good Ol' days

Back in the days of yore we were truly blessed to witness the glory of the Celeron 300a. With the advent of that CPU, overclocking truly made an enormous dent. Instead of something done to eek out a little more power, it was turned into an equalizer. One could rival top of the line systems with parts that cost a mere fraction.

A few epochs later the Celeron 366 came out, initially as overclockable as John Belushi is skinny. As time passed the 366 became a bit leaner and turned into a monster, hitting speeds of 550 MHz and higher. Then… there was silence. A few others dared to reach those dizzying heights but didn't quite cut it. Either the price wasn't low enough or the performance gains not great enough. Fellow brethren, the time of the Celeron has dawned upon us once again. Behold, the Celeron II 566 MHz.

Remember the good old days? When all you had to do was get an Abit BH6 and a Celeron 300a and you would have a King Kong of a system. I was one of those people. In fact I still have that same system running. And we're going guess that a lot of people out there probably had or still have that same system.

Money Money Money

The costs of getting a more powerful CPU are a great deterrent in constant upgrades. I got my 300a for around $100, give or take a twenty or two. That was as much as I was willing to spend on a processor at that time. Anything more seemed to be a waste. Seeing my investment slowly become worth as much as the sand it came from was not a good feeling. My frugal guju side just doesn't allow it. In the past few months I've been irked by the processing power of my computer, if only because of the occasional hiccup in Q3 or the boot time. So it was time to open up my wallet and see just what I could get.

Aluminium? Ha! Not!

I got down to thinking about getting a Coppermine. I realized that I would need a new motherboard, some new RAM, as well as the new CPU in order to make for a more successful overclocking. That didn't sound too appealing though, because I was getting to be a bit lazy about having to sell my old parts and get new ones.

Enter the Celeron II. (choir sings) This little puppy can be had for around $150, making this a very cheap and quick way to update that ailing computer of mine. If that isn't enough, remember that you can still sell that little 300a for a few bucks, bringing this CPU even further down to earth. The question that lingered was, would this work?