[Thinkpad] 600X 800MHz Upgrade Report

I got my 800MHz CPU upgrade from Joeyw on eBay yesterday and promptly
popped it into my 600X (formermly at 650MHz) to get a little more pep out
of it.

The CPU arrived in a plastic baggie, sealed with some refurbishers tag
that gave the specs on the module. That was wrapped in bubble wrap and
that in turn was shipped in a padded envelope. I would have preferred a
small box, but that's life.

Here's a tip: PRINT OUT the pages from the HMM on keyboard assembly
removal and CPU card removal. It helps you remember just which screws go
where, and there were a lot: 17 in total IIRC.

Tip 2: Your power switch will fall out. Remember to put it back BEFORE you
put all the screws back. D'oh!

The difficulties I had were the little black screw covers. I marred a
couple of them so they will not go back in place. *** Anyone know a good
source for the screw covers?

The other thing that was a little tough was removing the CPU card
assembly. There's no good way to get in there with your fingers to
disconnect that fascinating connector. I used a screwdriver to gently pry
the free end up, little by little, until it came free.

Once it was in place, I screwed the machine back together, noticed the
power switch laying on the table, and dealt with that. I powered up with
no drives in place, just to see if it would emit smoke, but it started
fine. I went into the BIOS and was greeted with a new note: 800MHz!
Woohoo!

I put back the hard drive and started XP, and it's working about the same
as before. The benchmark I found rated the machine at about 14% faster on
the CPU test, but I was hoping for 23% (800/650 = 1.231). Then again, I'm
having difficulty getting XP to just run the CPU at full speed. I tried
disabling the CPU power management, and got the same number. I ran Intel's
CPUID software, and it reported the speed at 459MHz or so, and said it
expected 650MHz.

I may pop in an old 4GB drive and restore the Win98SE factory image so I
can postivitely lock the CPU clock and try again. (I couldn't find any way
to disable shutoffs or timers of any sort.)

So for now, the upgrade does seem worthwhile.

Chris Schumann

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Received on Fri Jun 4 10:16:28 2004