Powerleap PL-PII 433

Should you buy the Powerleap PL-PII 433? Well, the first thing you need to understand is this. The PL-PII is not your conventional overdrive processor, you should consider it to be a Celeron 433 with a feature filled Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, and nothing more.

Those of you interested in dual processor operation will be pleased by the pre-wired state of the PL-PII for operation in dual processor mode, however expect to spend a little more than you normally would on a Celeron 433 + Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter combo due to the nature of the upgrade.

The smart thing for Powerleap to do would be to sell their Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter separately, unfortunately there is no indication as of yet if they are going to pursue that avenue or not. Users of the Celeron 433 probably wont have any use for the manual adjustment of the processors core voltage, as it cant be overclocked to a speed high enough to require such a tweak (488MHz is quite stable at 2.0v across the board). And support for the 100MHz FSB is out of the question as the Celeron 433 barely makes it up to 541MHz (83.3MHz x 6.5) , much less 650MHz, so in essence, Powerleaps additions to the standard Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter card are virtually useless when packaged with the Celeron 433.

Although they do come, as mentioned before, ready for Dual Processor operation, a number of on-line vendors are already offering the same modifications already made to MSIs own Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter boards.

Powerleap is planning to make the PL-PII available in speeds of 466MHz and 500MHz when those processors are released later this year. One of the beauties of the Powerleap kit is that you can simply pull out the 433 and replace it with a faster Celeron CPU in the future without any problems.

In essence, the Powerleap PL-PII is designed for the novice user who doesnt want to mess with soldering contacts to setup a dual processor system and doesnt want to toy with any part of the upgrade process other than sticking a new processor in their CPU slot. However for most tweakers and AnandTech readers, unless Powerleap makes the card available without the bundled processor, you may want to overlook this upgrade.

Its ironic that the only group of people that would really benefit from an overdrive like the PL-PII are those that are crippled due to a lack of BIOS support from their motherboard manufacturers. This brings up an important question: If you had known, back when the Pentium II 266 went for $1200 and the only 440FX based motherboards available retailed at above $280, that the future of your expensive investment would be a dead endwould you have stuck with Socket-7?

UPDATE - 04/08/99  Powerleap has recently informed AnandTech that they will be selling the adapter by itself, the estimated retail cost for the adapter is $29.95.  Although the the price is a bit higher than most Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapters (which go for about $15), the price is justified by the on-board voltage controls, 66/100MHz FSB forced detection jumper, the ability of the card to run in dual processor configurations without any modifications (two cards are required), and the dual-phase temperature sensing fail-safe system which gradually reduces the clock speed of your processor should the CPU fan fail and your CPU begin to overheat.   If you're at all interested in a Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, the Powerleap PL-PII is probably your best bet, it breaks the barriers that once kept all Celeron 300A owners going back to ABIT for motherboards and does so while adding quite a few new features that are well worth the money.