Worthy successor to the legendary Quantum Fireball Plus LM, fluid. P4 1.8A @ 2.3Ghz (128FSB),1.6Vcore, Asus P4b266, 3:4, Turbo1.

Hey all, today I went on a mission to find out what was in the case of a Sony Vaio PCV-RX650 Desktop that a friend gave me a while back. I learned some interesting things. It seems that the motherboard is an Asus P4B266-LM. The RAM installed on the two slot board is DDR (PC2100) in a (2) x 256MB configuration for a total of 512MBs. The video card installed is some sort of Asus card that is pretty old and outdated, but the important part - it was installed in an AGP slot.

(Whoo-hoo, I have one AGP slot to work with!) The CPU looked to be a Pentium 4 1.6Ghz socket 478 chip. I put in a different powersupply to get it going a while back, and there is some old DVD-ROM drive in there as well. That basically sums up the machine, now for the questions. In a few months when I get some cash, I want to build a Conroe system from the ground up. In the mean time, I have my laptop and this desktop. I am thinking that it might be smart to put $200 bucks or so into the desktop, to upgrade it to a gameable level and just give it some more power.

However, I need some help. First off, do you all think that it's worth spending money on the above mentioned system? Assuming your answer was yes, is it possible to use that motherboard and just upgrade the components on it, without buying a whole new one? Now is where it gets complicated. I have heard that that motherboard was a modification of a slightly popular board put out by Asus back when Pentium 4s first came out. Sony took the Asus P4B266 motherboard and made the LM, which was designed specifically for Sony desktop machines. I also read that the board has a slightly bad BIOS built in, revision 1002.

Sony tried to fix this by putting out revision 1004, and this made the board worthwhile again. I got this BIOS upgrade, but Sony hasn't put out a newer version since 4/24/2002 (When revision 1004 was realeased.) I am hearing that revision 1004 limits the maximum CPU speed on the board to 2.6Ghz. Does anyone know anything about this?

Or maybe where I could find information on this board? Maybe there is a modded or non-Sony BIOS I can get for it that fixes the 2.6Ghz CPU limitation? If the board indeed does not allow chips faster than 2.6Ghz, is it worth trying to get a 2.6Ghz P4 from somewhere and using it? (Newegg doesn't have any, I googled and found a few from manufacturers I haven't heard of - not nessacerily a bad thing but I don't really like ordering on the internet.) I take it there are also complications having to do with supported FSB speeds as well? Sony (obviously) no longer has the computer up on their site, so I can't look there for upgradability of this computer.