Slocket Solutions

About the most interesting part of the Socket-370 is the possibility of a socket-to-slot riser, or "slocket." Several motherboard manufacturers are working on slocket designs that will allow users to save a few dollars buy purchasing Socket-370 Celeron processors, while retaining the ability to use greater feature-set Slot-1 motherboards. This will also allow users to upgrade to full-fledged Pentium II or Pentium III systems in the future, if they decide they've outgrown their Celeron.

Having the option of using Slot-1 considerably increases the variety of motherboards available to choose from. If you want a Celeron system to overclock, and want additional on-board options, good luck trying to find it in the explicitly budget-oriented Socket-370 world. On-board SCSI and LAN are generally only found in higher end motherboards, and riser cards will give PPGA owners the same benefits for the standard slot SEPP modules.

Another immediate benefit of the riser is the incentive to overclock. Currently, only slot-1 motherboards such as the Abit BH6 allow users to manually change the voltage settings of their CPUs (this will likely change, as motherboard manufacturers are well aware of everyone's love of the Celeron's overclockability). Of the Socket-370 motherboards we've seen, typically the only available clock frequencies are 66Mhz and 100Mhz. With already-high speed processors such as the 400Mhz Celeron, the chances of overclocking to 600Mhz with 100Mhz FSB can be expected to be fairly modest.

This leaves the "intermediate" frequencies of 68, 75, and 83Mhz, which also allow for a much greater success rate for overclocking, but are much less stable than 66/100 due to the corresponding frequency increase for the PCI and AGP buses. By slightly increasing the voltage to the processor, there is a much higher chance to attain success at 100Mhz, which ironically might be more stable than 75 or 83.

Slocket Dangers

One word of warning, however. According to several prominent motherboard manufacturers, using a slocket design may actually hinder your ability to overclock your processor. The reasoning is simple - when a motherboard is designed around a slot or socket connector, the physical lengths of the trace components (the etched "wires" you see on all printed circuit boards) must be set correctly for CPU to bus and memory timings to be accurate.

In this way, Socket-370 motherboards based on existing Slot-1 designs must still be modified on a low level to ensure proper functioning. In other words, you can't just take off the slot and solder in a socket and expect it to work well. A socket-to-slot riser card must be manufactured very carefully to preserve as best as possible the existing trace distances, but as you can expect, the tolerances will be stretched to accommodate the adapter. Throwing off the required timings slightly may not affect normal operation, but at higher frequencies, problems are more likely to arise.

Since we haven't yet tested any riser solutions (as of this writing we're not aware of any that have come to market), we can't say whether or not this is true, or if it will have any bearing on the frequency increase from 400Mhz to 500 or 600Mhz. However, it is an important note to keep in mind, and it brings into play the question of how the quality of motherboard design and manufacture can affect CPU overclocking.