Abit PD5NE Features - 2-10
2-10
Chapter 2
® Presentation and Installation of the CPU
Since 1996, every two or three months, Intel adds new models to the
Pentium CPU series. That is why the CPU market is filled with a lot of different
models and brands. All CPUs have different electrical specifications. That
’s why
installing a CPU is becoming more and more complex. You can
’t help that,
because everybody wants to be able to upgrade its hardware. So, you have to
take a bit of time to read this section, in order to be able to install a cheaper and
better processor.
The PD5N mainboard does not only support all the CPUs listed in the
specifications, but also has reserved several circuits in order to be able to
support future processors. But before we go further in our presentation, we
must clarify that
“we have only tested the CPUs listed in Chapter 1”, we cannot
guarantee that this board will be able to support future products, because we
cannot forecast future developments. But we will do our best to support any
possible CPU.
Related terminology :
External clock
Also referred to as the external CPU clock, or
“Bus clock”, it is the input
clock of the CPU. For instance, Intel Pentium P90, P120 and P150 all have
a 60MHz external CPU clock, but have different internal clock multiplier
factors.
Clock multiplier factor
The real operation clock within the CPU is the multiple of the external
clock. We refer to this factor as the clock multiplier factor. The four
factors possible are 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3. The factor differs from one CPU to
another. For instance, the Intel Pentium 166 CPU has a 66MHz external
clock, with a multiplier factor of 2.5, so that the speed of the internal clock
is 66MHz x 2.5.