Upgraded 486 will never perform like a Pentium

Archived Articles, Buying Guides

Question: Almost three years ago, I bought a Packard Bell Force 715, a 486 DX/33 with eight megs of RAM, Headland VGA video card and a 340-meg hard drive. Now that I’ve installed a CD-ROM multimedia kit, I’ve been getting so many new programs for the computer, and many of these programs are getting power-hungry. For instance, I want to get NHL 96, and I tried out the demo for it, but the game was extremely slow, and the animation was hard on the eyes. Obviously, the game itself will be just as bad, if not worse. Therefore, I need to know what I should start upgrading first. Many advisers are saying that I should get an Overdrive Processor (DX/100 or P/83). Others say I should upgrade my RAM to 16 megs. Still others are saying I should get a new video card. Could you prioritize these options and tell me what would give me the greatest performance boost? Oh, by the way, I’m getting a new 1.2-gig hard drive, but that will need to be complemented by a good overall performance from the motherboard components, right? Please give me any help you can. – Larry

Answer: In a perfect world, the best advice is this: Don’t bother upgrading – save your money and buy a better machine. Upgrading a machine as old as the one you have is a waste of money given your goals, because you are never going to be satisfied with the results. But you probably don’t want to hear that and I don’t blame you. So let’s make the best of the situation and look at the advantages of upgrading each component.

A typical, new off-the-shelf game these days is recommending minimum specs of a Pentium-100 Mhz machine with 16 megs of RAM and, in some cases, a video card with two megs of video RAM. The first one is unattainable in your situation unless you replace the whole motherboard. That’s not a good option, because for the cost you may as well buy a new machine.

If you buy an Overdrive chip, you’ll fall short of the first spec, anyway, so let’s deal with that in a minute. The second requirement is 16 megs of RAM. That is attainable. The best bang for the buck is always a memory upgrade, in my opinion, and it should almost always be a computer owner’s first line of defence against obsolescence. RAM is cheap. In some places, you can still pick it up for $10 to $15 per meg (2001 update: not anymore, it’s $1 a megabyte or so). It’s the most cost-effective way to extend the usefulness of your machine.

If you take only one piece of advice that I offer today, then buy as much RAM as you can afford and that your machine will take. You won’t be disappointed. I just helped a close friend set up a 486-33Mhz machine that she inherited. When we checked out the memory, we discovered it was installed with 24 megs of RAM. That was good news because my friend wanted Windows 95 which, as a minimum, recommends eight megs of RAM and a 486-66 Mhz processor. The extra memory made that machine sing.

“Memory upgrade for this system might require the user to go to Packard Bell and get the original memory. If he is lucky, he might be able to stick generic memory into it,” said Mathew Fiszer, a senior support technician at Edmonton’s CompuSmart west-end store. Check with Packard Bell to get specifics on this first.

Your video card is also a bottleneck. A new two-meg video card is recommended, and $100 and change is going to get you a slightly better card than you already have. If you spend $300 to $400, you’ll get a kick-butt card that will take care of any graphics needs that you have.

The difficulty here will be to find a new card that is supported by your machine. Ideally, you want a PCI video card, but my advisers tell me your machine doesn’t have any PCI slots, so you’re stuck with searching out a VLB or ISA video card. A PCI – Peripheral Component Interconnect – video card plugs into a more advanced bus system in your computer. (A bus is another way of saying the data pathways on your motherboard.) Most newer PCs include a PCI bus in addition to a more general ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) expansion bus. The VLB acronym is short for VESA Local Bus. It appeared most commonly in machines made in 1993 and 1994.

So, with the acronyms out of the way, you want to look for a high-end non-PCI video card. Let’s say you managed to find a decent mid-range card and upgraded your RAM by buying an extra 16 megs. You’re looking at a bill of maybe $500 to $600 after the tax person takes a share. Now, as far as the Overdrive chip upgrade goes, if you decided to go with the P/83 model, you’re faced with a bill just shy of $1,000. That’s $500 short of a brand new $1,500 Pentium system.

The Overdrive chip is undoubtedly going to give your system a kick. On its own, it’s not worth bothering. “The problem with all overdrives,” explained Fiszer, “is that you will not get the true performance of a Pentium system on a 486 motherboard.” Old bus architecture, even with an Overdrive chip, is still old. The data pathways are smaller and data travels around it slower than in the PCI bus architecture on a Pentium motherboard. Paired with as much RAM as will fit and that you can afford, the Overdrive chip may be worthwhile, but when the NHL98 comes out and recommends a loaded Pentium-120 Mhz machine, you’re going to be backed into a corner with nowhere to go.

Regarding your new hard drive, you’re going to have a small problem. Older 486 machines don’t support the large gig-sized hard drives. In fact, your system won’t support a hard drive bigger than 528 megs, advised Fiszer, without one of two modifications to your system.

  • Option 1 is to install “overlay software” which will fool the machine’s BIOS and enable you to install the drive. If you take this route, check with your local computer store for the software.
  • Option 2 is to add an Enhanced IDE controller card. Fiszer recommends something called a GSI18 card which has an on-board BIOS.

Finally, your new hard drive, will give you lots of more space, of course, and is probably speedier than your old one, but, as you suggested, it’s not going to improve the overall system’s speed much.

If readers are looking for more information on upgrades, there are a couple of decent books out on the market that are worthwhile.

I have added a couple of places where you can purchase new computer online.