Posted: March 29, 2000
Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan

Introduction

We’ve never done a processor review (upgrade or otherwise) here on Tweak3D, and now we’ve got two of them lined up back to back from Evergreen Technologies. The one that I am most impressed with technically is the AcceleraPCI card. It uses a PCI slot to upgrade an old Pentium-class system to a PII-class system with onboard RAM and a Celeron Processor. But that isn’t what I’m reviewing for you today. I am reviewing what appears to be a plain vanilla Slot-1 CPU upgrade for old PII systems. The question is, however, is that all there really is to it?

Price and Features

When it comes down to features and price, this product doesn’t really look particularly impressive. At $229 dollars ($199 after the rebate), the Celeron 500 with Slotket doesn’t look particularly impressive -- I could put together a similar combo down at my local computer shop for about half the cost. Now, granted, there are a few nice little features on this processor that might make it worth your while.

The 3-year warranty is the most generous in the industry, so if you live in an area prone to lightning strikes or are just paranoid about your hardware breaking, this could be a good deal for you. The standard (boxed) Intel processor only has a 90-day warranty. Another nicety about this particular setup is the CPU fan, which uses a standard 12 V. connector as opposed to a "smart" connector on the motherboard. If you actually have other uses for the smart plugs (like you own the expensive smart fans), this could come in handy. Also, the slotket that they chose to use for their setup is even sturdier than most of the current coppermine-ready cards on the market (it is different from the one in the picture - the current card has a black metal casing so you can make use of the slot-1 processor locks), and appears to include all of the jumper settings we have come to know and love on our Slot-1 converters. And although it wasn’t included in my package, they have started shipping this processor upgrade with a CD full of BIOS flashes for various CPU’s. But all in all, while this product isn’t deficient in any way, it does appear to be excessively overpriced. Until you consider...

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