Ever since the advent of the earliest Pentium processors there has been a need for older systems (486's in the case mentioned) to be able to keep up with such speeds. Intel is usually the one to bring out overdrives specific to their design but as we moved into the long black board that is slot1 things started to change. Now instead of overdrives Intel produces budget CPUs that work with just about any Slot1 or even Slot2 Motherboard, this has left a gap for Pre-Slot1 systems in need of additional horsepower. In steps Evergreen Technologies a recognised competitor in the overdrive department although not one that usually has had the best performance. In the past Evergreen have had to use lesser chip designs with their upgrade technology as Intel already had their own line, however things have changed.

Ever since Intel left the Socket7 scene there has been a gap for Overdrives to fill and so far nobody has actually tried anything of any great note. Thankfully Evergreen closely followed by a couple of other developers (to be covered in future reviews) has stepped in with their cement truck to fill up the gab. We were able to get our hands on a Spectra400Mhz which is designed to upgrade systems right back to the earliest of Pentium CPUs.

The Hardware

The Spectra400Mhz is essentially a K6-2-400 CPU from AMD built onto a small circuitry system, this allows you to adapt to older voltage and pin designs. Previous Evergreen CPUs have only been able to boost P75's and upwards to 200Mhz including MMX instructions, a 400Mhz boost is a massive leap forwards. The difference is obviously that being a K2-6 CPU you get 3Dnow! Instructions on-top of existing MMX, in general a more up to date CPU. Included in this package also comes a CD-ROM filled with bios updates to get rid of Y2K problems and also make it ready for your CPU. The CPU itself has 64K of Level1 Cache, is compatible with Socket5, 7 and Super 7 systems, Lifetime Warranty (always good) and a bus that works at 66Mhz and 100Mhz.

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