OK, lots of people have had a say.
Ask yourself, "Why do I want to upgrade?"
If your answer is "to build a fire-breathing behemoth", then go for the
best you can get.
If your answer is "to eliminate some perceived slowness", then get
something better than you have.
Since you say you have a PII-266 now, it is likely that we have a 66 MHz
Front Side Bus on board and a processor running at 4X bus speed. First,
determine if your board can crank out a 100MHz Front Side Bus rate and
that your memory is indeed PC100 compatible (SDRAM doesn't all work at
100MHz).
If you can get the Bus speed improved, you will see a much greater
improvement than you would with just a faster processor, with the
exception of solving systems of partial differential equations, matrix
transformations, and 3D rotations of coordinates, processes that are
more processor-bound than memory- or I/O-bound. In other words, a 450
sitting on your board and still running at 66MHz is going to be
whistling at 6.5 times bus speed, or about 433, and is going to be
yawning, saying "Ho hum, I wonder when some data will arrive to be
processed."
Next item is the Power requirement. I know several people with more
money than sense who snapped up P-IIIs as soon as they could get them,
than called me in to get them working. Not all boards built for the
P-II can source the 2.2v at 18 freakin' amps the P-III requires. Make
sure whatever board you have or choose is one of them before you choose
a P-III.
I hope these considerations assist you in making a decision that will
not disappoint whatever your purpose is.
Civileme
--
Civileme Say:
"He who buys Pentium III had lots of bucks"
