Evergreen Spectra 400 – The Ultimate Socket 5/7 Upgrade CPU!

Computers were very expensive in the early to mid-90s and to make matters worse, technology was evolving at lightning speed. The Spectra 400 is perhaps the ultimate upgrade CPU that allows a 400MHz AMD K6-2 to work in even very old socket 5/7 motherboards. Not only did they provide a very potent upgrade chip, but BIOS updates and a great software package to make upgrading as seamless as possible. Join me today as I take an in-depth look at the Evergreen Spectra 400 and attempt to push it even further!

The Intel Pentium Overdrive for 486 Systems

Necroware’s Socket 7 VRM Project:

Evergreen Spectra 400 Floppy and CD:

Evergreen Spectra 400 BIOS Dump:

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00:00 Introduction
03:43 The Evergreen Spectra 400
06:57 Test Setup
08:28 Gaming on the Pentium 100
10:19 Installing the Spectra 400
12:09 BIOS Updates
13:45 The Software Utilities
16:03 Much Faster!
17:55 3D Possibilities!
18:39 Pushing it Even Further
22:05 Benchmarks
23:49 Conclusion

[RichardG]

Thanks for mentioning my catalog of decoded Evergreen BIOS updates. I've actually been a subscriber for a while! Small world. It was a pain to reverse engineer but I eventually got it done in a roundabout way.

[mstover]

14:31 I remember fixing a computer for a friend that had put a K6-2 400 in it. He was unable to get windows to install so asked me to look at it.
I had to de-clock it to 300MHz to install windows AND the patch for the faster CPU before returning the clock speed to 400MHz.

[nboy]

I miss the days where you could make new hardware work on old boards like this, things like these Evergreen Spectras and the Intel overdrive. Also the fact that when Intel tried to abandon a platform AMD, Cyrix etc would come in and continue to support it.

[ShowsOn]

This brings back many memories. I upgraded from a Pentium 133 to a K6-2 400 using the 6X multiplier. The new CPU only cost me $80 second hand.

[OzzFan]

As you may have already deduced, Unicore Sofware was a BIOS company that wrote and sold upgrade BIOS chips for PCs and compatibles. I had purchased a physical BIOS chip from them back in 1994 or 95 to upgrade the BIOS on my Packard Bell mini-tower so that it could run the AMD Am5x86 CPU and overcome my original BIOS's 504MB hard drive limit.

[Miasmark]

Some of the other bioses on the CD are Microid Research or MR Bios which sold updated bioses to enable more features and enhance compatibility. the vendor who made the altered award bios you saw probably did the same. Evergreen must have gotten a special license for the bioses since they would have still been for sale which might be why the odd process to update the bios.

[Markworth]

Ahh. The good old days when upgrading to a "3D card" was so substantial that it made your computer noticeably faster at everything. Never knew that this was a thing, though. Super cool.

[v]

I miss the days of goodwill computer works. They used to have mail bins full of parts screws motherboards and vintage computers all on the cheap.

[JohnVance]

Nothing since has been as versatile as Socket 7. Really was a golden age of compatibility and experimentation. I hope some kind of RISC-V version can take off and do the same at some point.

[NMRotar]

I just built myself a budget gaming PC with 100 euro.I was surprised to see that I got some parts very cheap, from 7-8 years ago and they can still run 85-90% from all new games.
Upgrading now is way more easier then in 90's .
With all the Information available nowadays.... anyone can build anything, even a rocket spaceship 🚀

[chalcac]

A true nostalgia trip. That was true longetivity with a cpu upgrade providing proper speed increase :)

[Choralone]

Back in those days I seriously considered an Evergreen Spectra 400 + K6-2 400 MHz for my Megatrends HX83 mainboard where I started with a K5 75 MHz (later a K6 200 MHz in 97) and 32 MB of EDO RAM. But I ended up with a great deal on an Abit BH6 + Celeron 300A + 128 MB PC100 SDRAM in early 1999.

The 400+ MHz K6-2 chips had just been released in November 1998 but the lure of an overclocked 300A, the faster and higher capacity SDRAM, less than 18 months after getting the K6 was just too much to resist! That BH6 + 300A ran at 464 MHz, 103 MHz FSB for years until the board failed spectacularly while my parents owned the machine around 2003-2004.

Still, the 486 through the Pentium 3 days were exciting with the amount of upgrade adapters that were on the market. I used a voltage adapter on my 486 PC to upgrade it with a AMD 5x86 133 MHz chip. And later on in the slot 1 days I used a slotket adapter to run a socket 370 CPU in a different slot 1 board than the Abit I previously mentioned.

[SockyNoob]

Truly amazing results, absolute shame nothing like this is even attempted or possible. Great video documenting it.

[dfxvoodoocards]

Very interesting video. Back in 1999 I upgraded my PC from a P166 MMX to a K6-2 400 mhz on the same motherboard, but unfortunately I dont know if it was Socket 7 or Super Socket 7. Anyway the K6-400 mhz was significantly faster than the P166 MMX.

[sandmanxo]

The K6-2 was quite tolerant of higher voltage, as I ran about 30 of these(stock ones, not the evergreen) at my job in the 2000-2001 timeframe. Most boards only went down to 2.5v core which never gave me problems. I usually bought 450mhz versions and ran them on a 75mhz bus with the 6x multiplier. In theory most boards also had 83mhz busses but I rarely got the pci cards to play along with that speed.

[rchatte]

I had a similar powerleap adapter. I imported it from the US to the UK. IIRC upgraded my Pentium 75 Mhz to a Pentium "tualatin" 233 Mhz with MMX. Made a huge difference!

[BigBadBench]

Love pushing hardware farther than intended, great vid!

[markgomersbach]

Great video again, had the luxury back then moving from a Cyrix 200 to a K6-3 550, now I did have the Voodoo1 already in the former system, but it still was a huge improvement!

[techdistractions]

Would be interesting to see if this works on one of those budget pc partner boards with 83mhz fsb. With the 6x multiplier you could possibly get something like the k6/3 500 going 😮

Also, that bios can be extended and patched to detect those extra cpus ;-)

[joetheman]

There was also a K6-III+ 550 Mhz. The fastest and last of the great Super Socket 7 chips.