Well, I have a few concerns...
First, the CPU information was "melted" off? Intel acid etches this to the microprocessor cover plate. Perhaps, the thermal compound used has made it difficult to read but cleaning that off real well should reveal the data you are looking for. I suggest rubbing alcohol (70 - 90% isopropyl alcohol solution) and a Q-Tip (cotton swap) or even tissues if you don't press too hard. You should also clean the mating surface of the heat sink to remove any old thermal compound if you don't get a new heat sink and fan with your new processor. Remember, you must use new thermal compound or a new thermal pad between the processor and heat sink to properly transfer heat from the processor to the heat sink. Otherwise, your processor will likely overheat and burn up.
My second concern is the bent pins on the old processor. How did you manage that? Socket 478 is a
ZIF socket. You drop the processor in with the arrows or triangles aligned and flip the lever to lock the processor. The exact opposite procedure is used to remove the processor. You flip the lever to unlock the processor and gently pull it out with two fingers. I suppose that if you don't take the heat sink off before you remove the processor, it would be difficult to remove the heat sink from the processor probably bending pins in the process.
Of course, none of that helps you now...
It is true that socket 478 Celeron processors are interchangeable with socket 478 Pentium 4 processors which have the same motherboard requirements. For example, I have a Pentium 4 socket 478 processor running in one of my computers but the motherboard is not capable of Hyper Threading technology which limits the processors that are compatible. Additionally, the motherboard I have is only capable of 533MHz front side bus so I can't drop an 800MHz processor in there.
Now, I have a very old socket 478 motherboard. That socket had only been out for about 6 months then and most Pentium 4 computers were using the socket 423 processor. Perhaps you have a new enough motherboard in your system that it doesn't matter.
It is possible that you damaged the socket when you removed the old process since you bent some pins in the process. The only way I would know if your new processor is compatible is if I knew what chipset the motherboard is using. I'm wondering about the guy that installed the Celeron processor... You said that you cross-referenced with Dell so is this a Dell computer? did he do an upgrade for you when he installed the Celeron processor that you removed? Why did you remove the old processor since you determined that you had to replace it after it was removed, I didn't gather that you were trying to upgrade the Celeron when you started.
If you could answer a few of these questions, perhaps we can determine if your system is compatible.
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I guess that I took too long to write this, someone else has also responded...
The maximum CPU frequency is reliant on the chipset used in the motherboard. So, the chipset must have a maximum speed set various processors. It could simply be that the 2.5 GHz P4 attempts to send too much data through the FSB for the chipset to handle but the less powerful 2.5 GHz Celeron processor doesn't overwhelm the system since it processes fewer instructions even though they run at the same frequency.
Additionally, the motherboard could have been locked to prevent upgrading! Dell doesn't make money from people that upgrade their computers, they make money from people that buy new computers.
vujsa
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