cpu - What do Intel's socket package specifications mean in detail?

06
2014-04
  • De coder

    What is the difference between

    • FCPGA988
    • PGA988
    • rPGA
    • rPGA988B
    • BGA1224
    • FCBGA1224

    Do some mean that the BGA is soldered to the board and cannot be removed? BGA is soldered versions only, right?

    What does "FC", "PG" and "988", "1224" mean, etc.?

    • Answers
  • Journeyman Geek

    The numbers are the number of pins, and kind of tells you which motherboards it will go into - the current Ivy Bridge Desktop Boards use LGA 1155 sockets - LGA means Land Grid Array - the pins are on the motherboard, not the chip.

    BGA means Ball Grid Array and yes, it does mean they are soldered on through little balls on the underside of the package. If you had specialist equipment you could in theory desolder that and resolder a new one. I doubt too many people have access to a reflow oven tho

    PGA means Pin Grid Array, which means the pins are on the processor, FCPGA simply means the chip is mounted upside down, and rPGA simply means the 'pitch' or distance between pins is less.

    Together, these should give you a rough indication of what chip would physically fit into a socket - no chance of me putting an old c2d era LGA 775 (with 775 pins) into a modern LGA 1155. You will also need to check if the bios will work with the chip you want.

    Get a chip of the same packaging type - for example, if your current chip is a FCPGA 998, get a chip that's also FCPGA 998, and a good bet might be to get a chip thats used in a different SKU of your laptop.

    Upgrading laptops is a bit of a crapshoot though, and its likely to be tricky.


    • Related Question

    linux - Determine Socket from /proc/cpuinfo
  • David Grant

    Is there a simple way to determine the CPU socket from the output of /proc/cpuinfo. Determining the type of processor is simple enough, but the processor I have (Celeron) has two different possible sockets. The output of /proc/cpuinfo is:

    processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 4
model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.66GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 2672.411
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat     pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc up pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl tm2 cid cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 5344.82
clflush size : 64
power management:

    I've looked on the Intel processor finder web site with appropriate filters, but the stepping values do not appear to match anything.


    • Related Answers
  • Iain

    lshw will show you the socket

    sudo lshw -class cpu