P-200 Booster CPU upgrade

P-60, P-100 users target of new Gainbery product

by Ross MacDonald

CPU MAXimizer Booster 200
From: Gainbery Computer Products Inc.
Estimated street price: $1,079

A few months ago I wrote about the installation of a Gainbery MAXimizer GB686G upgrade chip onto a Pentium motherboard with the bus speed set at 66 MHz. At the time, Gainbery was soon to release another chip, called the Booster 200.

Well, the Booster 200 was released in late autumn and I have since been able to install and run it as well as compare its performance to the 686G. First, however, I should mention that both chips come with a heat sink and clock accelerator built in, so don't be daunted by the fact that they look somewhat larger/thicker than the originals. I should also mention that both are based on true Intel Pentium central processing units (CPUs).

The way all Gainbery upgrade chips work is that they read your motherboard's bus speed and internally multiply whatever it finds (to a maximum quintuple) by the speed of the upgrade's built-in CPU. If you originally bought, for example, a Pentium 60, chances are your motherboard bus was set to 30 MHz. The Gainbery setup for the appropriate upgrade chip would read that speed, quintuple it, feed the new CPU at that speed and, presto, you have a CPU running like a Pentium 150 (5 X 30 = 150). Of course, performance is limited by the bus speed and other components in your system, but you would undoubtedly see a dramatic difference.

One of the nicer things about the newer Pentium technology, though, is that you can actually set your motherboard's bus to different speeds in order to accommodate different chips. What this means, essentially, us that for a Gainbery upgrade you should check the jumpers on your motherboard (you DID get a manual for it, didn't you?!?) and set them for the highest possible bus speed.

I am, fortunately, able to set my motherboard's bus speed as high as 66 MHz-top limit right now in the Intel world-and that's the setting I used for both the 686G and the new Booster 200.

In order to test each chip, I kept all other factors identical and swapped only the CPUs which were, mercifully, automatically and correctly identified by the system BIOS. The swapping out process is extremely simple, just pop out the old chip and pop in the new. You only have to make sure that the identified Pin-1 is in the correct place on the socket. When you turn your machine on, a recent BIOS will almost always automatically read the CPU's speed (if it doesn't you're thrust into the dreaded land of jumper settings for which you'll need the motherboard's manual and/or good advice).

My computer immediately identified the Booster 200 as a true Intel Pentium running at 201 MHz. I used the Norton SI32 speed test, which compares how your computer performs to a 386SX 16 by running real as well as hypothetical logarithmic routines. The results showed that 686G ran 25.6 times faster than a 386SX 16, and the Booster 200, likewise 27.3 times faster.

As you can see, the improvement in performance was somewhat undramatic for the SI32 ratings amounting to about a seven percent increase in overall system speed. Even less astounding, there was no visible difference in my practical tests: search and replace in a 5,000-word document took less than a second with either processor.

A check with Gainbery engineers confirmed that the SI32 rating of a seven percent increase in system speed accurately reflects the difference between the two chips. But, they stressed, the Booster 200 isn't intended for those of us who are already in the P-166 league: it's made for the old-timers out there who have been chained to their antiquated P-60 or P-100 based machines for all of two years or so. They're the users who are bound to see dramatic speed enhancements of up to 100 percent or more.

Which brings us to that frightening product price. The estimated street price for a P-200 Booster is a whopping $1,079, almost the price of a whole new computer. But Gainbery has come to realize this problem and intends to soon announce a dramatic reduction, quite possibly by the time you read this article.

So, if you have a P-60 or P-100 machine, and you're happy with all the components except the CPU, the Booster 200 just might be the most effective way to update your system. First, we'll have to see how low Gainbery goes on that street price.

Contact: Gainbery, 165 Steelcase Rd., E. Markham, ON, L3R-1G1.
Tel: 800-825-7331. Fax: 905-415-9970.

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TCP Online February 1997 Issue