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Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 11:58 am
by vargis14
I am curious on people experience on their longest lasting motherboard that took the most substantial thus lasting you the longest?

Mine would have to be a lowly MSI K7S5A socket a MB that supported ddr2 and RDram or whatever it was ...its been a long time.
But that MB held out through a 900 tbrd to a 1400tbrd to its final upgrade of a 2400xp CPU. Then I purchased my 940pin fx-53 about a week after it was released.

How about you gerbils?

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:10 pm
by TwistedKestrel
I had to think about it... because I wasn't sure if I had upgraded the CPU in a system, ever. Usually I use machines for so long that by the time I feel like upgrading, the motherboard is hopelessly outdated anyway. I was planning to upgrade my i5-2500K to Ivy Bridge when it came out, but... seemed like there was no point when comparing them overclocked. Probably won't bother until DDR4 hits the mainstream, and then again, I'll need a new mobo.

However! I did upgrade the CPU in my Dell D620 to a T7600 (forget what it came with, I think I actually managed to sell the original CPU). Accidentally threw the laptop down a flight of stairs last week and it appears to be no worse for wear.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:24 pm
by The Egg
I generally hold my CPUs until new technology arrives, (such as DDR2 -> DDR3) and then I do the whole CPU/Motherboard/RAM package. I believe my last mid-cycle CPU upgrade was on a S939 Asus A8N-E, going from a single-core A64 3500+ to a dual-core X2 model. It's still going strong as my parents machine.

I've occasionally thought about selling my current 2500k on Ebay and grabbing an Ivy Bridge i7. It's not really necessary, but that would keep me running a P67 for a long time.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:27 pm
by Pez
My old AMD MSI board, the venerable MSI K9A2 Platinum. 3 different families of AMD Chips went through that board, I bought it on the first month of release and is probably the best AMD board I ever had (Although I've a soft spot for my old EpoX nForce2 one!)

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:32 pm
by drfish
I had to think about this for a bit too but I have a few to list, all tied for two CPUs.

Somewhere around 1994 (back when I was about 14) I swapped out my 486 DX2x66 for a Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz. That was also my first BIOS flash.

In 2007 I made the planned in advance swap from a E6600 to a Q6600 in my main rig so I could build a new HTPC around the E6600 (and play SupCom on the Q6600).

In 2011 (after a lot of research) I swapped out the Turion 64 X2 TL-56 in my ASUS F9Dc-A1 laptop for a Athlon X2 L310 because of the lower TDP (it didn't help battery life much).

Generally speaking though I don't plan on ever upgrading a CPU, mostly because there's almost always a use for a CPU/mobo/RAM combo but not so much for just a lone processor.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:34 pm
by puppetworx
Asus P5K PRO. I started with an Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 1.80GHz (3.2GHz OC), then moved to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (3.5GHz OC) and then earlier this year I modded the BIOS to use a quad core Xeon X5460 3.16GHZ (4.0GHz OC) in it. The (120W Max. TDP) Xeon really pushed it's limits though and I heard some coil whine when overclocked, at that point I decided to stop being rediculous and upgrade to my current motherboard, CPU and RAM. It lasted around 6 years total and I recently sold it on ebay for £50 ($80), pretty good going.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:37 pm
by just brew it!
Probably a tossup between the Micronics C200 I owned back in the Super 7 days, and my pair of identical Asus M3A78-CM Socket AM2+ motherboards.

The C200 saw numerous upgrades through the K6-2/III era. The last CPU upgrade it got was a K6-III+, which required a hacked BIOS since the III+ was never officially released for the desktop (it was supposed to be sold only to laptop OEMs). Starfalcon has that system in his collection now; as far as I know it is still functional.

The M3A78-CM was a fantastic little micro-ATX board for its day. Supported pretty much all AM2/AM2+/AM3 CPUs up through the Phenom II xxxxT (6-core) series via BIOS upgrades. Could take up to 8GB of DDR2 (back when 8GB was still considered to be a lot of RAM), and had proper support for ECC DIMMs. It could also do dual digital displays via the IGP (1 DVI + 1 DisplayPort), which is a rarity on inexpensive motherboards.

One of the M3A78-CMs was my primary home desktop for several years. The other was in an inexpensive system I originally threw together (everything except the motherboard came out of the spares pile) to take to work to have a secondary Linux box there. The one at the office currently has a 1090T in it, and still sees daily use. The M3A78-CM system at home is currently not in use, but is still 100% functional, and is about to get re-purposed for my new file server build.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:41 pm
by The Egg
If you wanna go real far back, I had a Socket 7 with a 430HX chipset that we took from a P100 to a P150 and finally a P200-MMX. I believe it also took EDO memory, which really gave everything a kick in the pants compared to other systems of the time.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:41 pm
by mdk77777
Yeah, I don't remember the socket, but it was an AMD board.
As I recall, you could go from the first 64 bit consumer chip(claw-hammer) through a couple of bumps in speed and ultimately to a real two core if not a real three core all on the same MB.

During the same time, Intel only managed to come out with a hyper-threaded duel core...and I don't recall if it was 64 bit...

Anyway, in the same period of time, I think intel introduced three new socket generations.

Maybe others will remember the dates and boards better, but there is no doubt that AMD held the record for the most generation of chips that you could use on the same MB.

Ah, the days when there was real competition and significant change occurred on an 18 month basis... :wink:

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:41 pm
by jackbomb
My trusty old Socket 939 A8N32-SLI Deluxe, which is still plugging away as a handy secondary machine.

I went from an Athlon 64 3000+ to an Athlon FX-57 and then finally to a dual core Opteron 185, which has been overclocked to a blistering 3.2GHz for years now. With a GTX-460 video card strapped in, it's still a very capable machine. Feels quite a bit faster than today's Silvermont Pentiums and A4 APUs.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:42 pm
by ronch
CPU upgradeability isn't really a top priority for me because I use CPUs for 2.5-3.5 years and by the time it's time to buy a new CPU, sockets will have changed, anyway. There are some platforms that have offered easier CPU upgrade paths, of course, and having said that I had an Athlon 64 X2 4800 (AM2) which I was able to use in an AM2 board and an AM2+ board. Later on I was able to replace it on said AM2+ board with a Phenom II X3. But while CPU upgrade paths are nice, it also has the natural consequence of having a platform that doesn't offer support for all the next-gen features a future CPU replacement might offer (but still, that's better than offering no upgrade path, isn't it?), so I bought a proper AM3+ board later on for said Phenom CPU. The cycle would've continued further on somewhat if I bought an AM3+ board and plugged said Phenom in it, but no.. it just wasn't enticing enough. Later I just bought an AM3+ board along with my current FX-8350.

Oh, and back in 1998 I had a Cyrix 6x86MX-PR233 running on an ECS P5SD-B+ (VIA MVP3 chipset, Super 7 platform). Replaced the Cyrix with an AMD K6-2/450 a year later. Super 7 is the most vendor-agnostkc platform ever... Pentium, Pentium MMX, K5, K6, K6-2, K6-3, Cyrix 6x86, Cyrix 6x86MX (or MII), IDT Winchip 1 and 2... and perhaps even Rise mP6. Holy crap. Super 7 is the most amazing platform ever.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 12:46 pm
by jackbomb
ronch wrote:
Super 7 is the most amazing platform ever.


Until you try to use an AGP card that isn't made by 3dfx. :P

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 1:16 pm
by Chrispy_
Socket A.
Asus A7V of some variety - probably A7V8X.

It was my overclocking testbed that went through a trio of Durons (600, 650, 750), A 1GHz Thunderbird, a 1.4GHz Thoroughbred-B, a Barton XP-M 2500+ and finally, before retirement, a genuine XP 3200+, rather than the 2500+ overclocked to the same speed. This was the era of Delta focussed-flow fans and peltier coolers added to waterblocks and it was a silly, beer-enriched time.

It seems like I had that board for ages but it was probably only three or four years until I switched to the (Core2) dark side. On the other hand my first ever MicroATX board was a P965 chipset MSI thing and I still run that today with a Q9550. That thing must be 8+ years old now even though it's only ever had two chips in it.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 1:29 pm
by SnowboardingTobi
I've never upgraded a CPU on a motherboard. I hold onto computers for so long that by the time I'm itching for a new CPU, I'm just building a whole new computer.

My current computer is 7 years old. The one before that lasted me 10-11 years - I forget. And before those? I don't even remember.

Although back in the day I did add a 387 coprocessor to my AMD 386DX/33MHz beast of a machine.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 1:37 pm
by DragonDaddyBear
drfish wrote:
In 2007 I made the planned in advance swap from a E6600 to a Q6600 in my main rig so I could build a new HTPC around the E6600 (and play SupCom on the Q6600).


I did a similar swap. I think I went from an E6400 to a Q6600 G0 stepping. A year later I added a liquid cooling setup to OC it to 3.4-3.6 GHz, depending on my mood. I used that computer I built in 2006(I think that's the right year, whenever the C2Duo came out) up until last year.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 2:12 pm
by JdL
I have a gigabyte G33-based motherboard which started with a Core 2-based E3300, moved to 4300 and OC'ed to 4+ GHz, spent a year with a 6600 G0 at 3.0, then upped to QX6850 which was OC'ed to 3.5. It's still running today with a E4300. (I gave away the other parts in other systems).

Darn good little board, seems to have plenty of life left :)

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 2:31 pm
by Aranarth
My father in law's machine has the most upgrades that I can think of:
Core 2 duo 2ghz (not sure the model number)
Core 2 duo 8400
Core 2 quad q6600

I have lots of amd mainboards and athlon processors and they have been swapped around quite a bit, everything from a 1.1ghz athlon up to a athlon xp 2400 running at 2.5ghz to build machines for myself, the kids, the wife, etc. etc.
Since everyone is using an athlon 64 x2 or better now, those older machines are mothbaleld for the time being. However I don't consider swapping processors around to build a machine to be a true "upgrade".

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 3:13 pm
by the
'Sawtooth' PowerMac G4. Started out as a 450 Mhz PowerPC 7400, then a 550 Mhz PowerPC 7410, then a 1 Ghz PowerPC 7450 and then finally a 1.8 Ghz PowerPC 7448. All the G4 class CPU's were soldered so Apple simply put the chips on a daughter card with external L2 cache. By swapping the card, the system could change processor generations with relatively ease. If I got my system a few months later, I would have received a revision of the north bridge that would have accepted dual processor daughter cards. I'm sure that over the history of the device I would have swapped in such a card if I could.

On the PC side of things, the most number of upgrades I've done has been three. lt was a Pentium D Dell box at work which I upgraded to a Core 2 Duo and then a Core 2 Quad. Home systems I've only upgraded once if at all.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 3:26 pm
by The Egg
JdL wrote:
286DX > Pentium Pro 200 > Athlon 1000 @ 1.4 GHz > Athlon 64 2.2 GHz > Athlon XP 3200+ > Core 2 Duo 3300 @ 4.0 GHz > Core 2 Quad 6600 G0 @ 3.2 > Core i7 3770 @ stock

That's an interesting sig. I've got the basics of all my rigs written down somewhere, but it might take up too much space for a sig :P . My first PC was also a 286 (8mhz), but I didn't think they used "SX/DX" monikers until the 386.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 3:47 pm
by bthylafh
I've upgraded CPUs on a handful of motherboards, and those just once. When I worked at an independent computer shop there was a customer who bought a 1 GHz Slot-1 Pentium III, which IIRC was put into a 440BX-based motherboard. That has to be the most drastic CPU upgrade I've ever done.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 3:53 pm
by Hz so good
The only times I've ever swapped out a CPU were on AMD boards. The 8086/286/386 were mounted on the PCB.

One was when I bought an DX4-100 overdrive kit for my 486-33. Best MS-DOS6.22 machine ever.

The other was an Athlon 2. I think that I swapped out an X3 for the fastest X4 my board supported.

/Geeze, I'm getting old...

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 3:58 pm
by Hz so good
The Egg wrote:
My first PC was also a 286 (8mhz), but I didn't think they used "SX/DX" monikers until the 386.


I had a 286-12. First time I saw Monkey Island 2 in 256 color, with the Adlib FM blaring thru that crappy Radio Shack speaker was mind-blowing.

/Although, Realsound thru the PC speaker, and that odd EGA mode that Access Software used was pretty wild, for the time.
//And I was still young enough to get conned by the "Amiga Screens Shown" in very tiny print on the game boxes... :-?

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 4:39 pm
by The Egg
Hz so good wrote:
The Egg wrote:
My first PC was also a 286 (8mhz), but I didn't think they used "SX/DX" monikers until the 386.


I had a 286-12. First time I saw Monkey Island 2 in 256 color, with the Adlib FM blaring thru that crappy Radio Shack speaker was mind-blowing.

/Although, Realsound thru the PC speaker, and that odd EGA mode that Access Software used was pretty wild, for the time.
//And I was still young enough to get conned by the "Amiga Screens Shown" in very tiny print on the game boxes... :-?

We got the 286 late, somewhere around 1993 for $90 with Hercules monochrome graphics and 20MB hard drive. First PC I got to mess around with upgrading and installing components. I added:

2MB of RAM (full-length ISA CARD)
SVGA Card (Cirrus Logic 1MB ISA)
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy
14.4 USR Modem

That got me playing shareware games off BBS's and such. Though most of the good stuff wanted a 386 by that point. I don't think we got a Soundblaster until the next PC.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 4:49 pm
by Hz so good
The Egg wrote:
We got the 286 late, somewhere around 1993 for $90 with Hercules monochrome graphics and 20MB hard drive. First PC I got to mess around with upgrading and installing components. I added:

2MB of RAM (full-length ISA CARD)
SVGA Card (Cirrus Logic 1MB ISA)
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy
14.4 USR Modem

That got me playing shareware games off BBS's and such. Though most of the good stuff wanted a 386 by that point. I don't think we got a Soundblaster until the next PC.


The few things I regret about those old PCs, was I'd do a mostly solid build, but being young and poor, I'd cheap out on one thing. Like instead of a SB-16 with a Roland or Yamaha daughterboard, I bought a friggin' Soundman Wave from Logitech. It was a cheap Pro Audio Spectrum knockoff, with that infamous "hanging note" GM problem. Or, better still, "Screw 3DFX... My Riva 128 does OpenGL!" *facepalm*

*EDIT*
Anybody know of a *free* virtual GM/GS/XG synth for Win7 64, that would let me use custom patches when playing older games in DosBOX ala the GUS? At least, the games that don't work with ScummVM, since the GM and MT-32 is pretty respectable there.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 5:20 pm
by travbrad
I've never upgraded a CPU on the same motherboard. I like to get at least 50-100% performance improvement from CPU upgrades, and that almost never happens within 1 socket/chipset unless you start out on a really cheap low-end CPU (which I don't do :P )

My first PC had a 400mhz celeron, then
Athlon XP 1900+,
XP 2500+ (my smallest CPU upgrade, but Barton overclocked well so it was still close to 50% performance)
X2 3800+,
E8400,
i5 2500K.

I have unfortunately gone through multiple motherboards for one CPU though. I had 3 MSI Nforce 2 motherboards fail in just over a year. After that I just gave up and went back to ASUS. It wasn't worth saving a few bucks (ASUS used to have a pretty significant price premium, unlike nowadays)

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 6:43 pm
by Mikael33
I don't think I've ever upgraded my CPU more than 3 times in a single mobo. Within the past few years I've went from a 3200+ A64 to a opteron 165(on an Asus Nf4 mobo) and more recently from a Phenom II x2 550BE to my current Phenom II 965BE. I was hoping to be able to unlock the X2, but no core showed up so I just overclocked the piss out of it.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 7:11 pm
by jihadjoe
MSI BXMaster! In my mind the best 440BX motherboard ever. Just a few hours after getting it I knew it was going to be around for a long long time.
Used it even after the i820 chipset came out and Intel were a bit slow with building i815 (no way I was going to pay the Rambus tax).

Celeron 300A - 450
Celeron 366 - 550
Pentium III 600 - 800
Pentium III 700 - 933

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 9:45 pm
by mnecaise
I haven't upgraded just a CPU since the 486 and 1st generation Pentium days. I had one board that went through three 486/586 upgrades -- I think they were 80486 pin compatible AMD and Cyrix chips. Ever since then I've kept a machine intact until I reached the point I would do a full technology upgrade: CPU, memory and motherboard. I still have the machine I bought in 2006, running it's original Pentium D 805, in the family room where my kids use it.

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2014 11:42 pm
by xgsound
My home computers started off with a Packard Bell 486SX 20Mhz. I added a DX40 then a DX4-100. The Dos games were vivid and fluid then, and when I added 4 MB of memory (for $400) Windows 3.1 worked pretty well. That's 3 CPUs.

The next one was a socket 7 100 Mhz pentium on a 430HX MOBO. I know I went thru a 233 Mhz overdrive then added a "Power converter" for split voltages and a succession of AMD CPUs; a K6, k6III, and finally a K62-450 clocked at 550 Mhz. That's 5 for this mobo.

Since 2006 I've moved up to a MSI K9NGM2 AM2 board with DDR2 and AMD X2. Recently I even installed Windows 7 and a 5600+ CPU so I'm caught up to 2009. Hurrah!!

Re: Your motherboard that had the most CPU upgrades

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 12:34 am
by MadManOriginal
I had a decent run with a DFI P35 LGA775 motherboard (DFI had overclocking tweak options that most motherboards didn't have until P45), Core 2 had a really wide range of CPUs and LGA775 lasted for a long while if you don't count the early versions that came out when the P4 was Intel's flagship.

But the actual winner here for me is the Abit BH6. I started with a Slot 1 Celeron 266 oc'd to 448MHz and it ended up with a Socket 370/slocket Tualatin Pentium III. The 440BX chipset was a minor miracle from Intel compared to the chipsets of today for its longevity, and the BH6 in particular was fantastic. The board finally blew a VRM from overly enthusiastic overclocking :( RIP.