The Spectra 400 comes with quite a lot of documentation and software for a CPU product. It comes with a user's manual, a quick start poster, a installation disk as well as a complementary installation CD that contains BIOS updates for common computer systems and motherboards. The quick start guide was very well written and it was apparent that it was designed for first-timers, since it goes into a lot of detail into things like how to remove your old processor and how to install the new one.

The actual Spectra 400 processor is actually a combination of a AMD K6-2 400MHz processor that is soldered onto a compatibility adapter. It is this compatibility adapter that allows the AMD K6-2 400MHz processor to be able to function on a Socket 5 or Socket 7 motherboard.

A special heatsink was included with the Spectra 400 package. Since the addition of the compatibility adapter adds a considerable amount of height which would have made any other heatsink to become physically incompatible, it was necessary for Evergreen Technologies to include this heatsink. Although it's not even close to the size of heatsinks that we are now used to seeing with today's processors, it does its job adequately for its intended user-those who wouldn't even think about overclocking.

Installation
Being a product designed for the first-time CPU upgrader, I thought that the Spectra 400 should have been a cinch to install, since I can safely say that I'm far from being a first-time system builder; I was very wrong.

Basically, the installation is supposed to go like this: you pop in the installation floppy disk, it scans your system to see if you need any BIOS updates, you turn off your computer, take out your old processor, stick in the Spectra 400, power up, and you're done. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly happen that way for me.

I do what the quick start guide told me: pop in the installation floppy disk, turn off my computer after it tells me that a BIOS update was not needed, take out my old Pentium MMX 200MHz processor, stick in the Spectra 400 (all the while, cursing at how much work space the person in the photograph in the quick start guide had because they had their motherboard in the open while I had mine crammed into a terribly-designed mid-tower case) and power up. Then, I waited... and I waited... and I waited... nothing! I took everything out again and tried again... nothing. I read through the troubleshooting part of the user's manual three times over... nothing!

I finally gave up and fired off an email to their technical support department, cursing again that they had just closed 10 minutes ago. My reply two days later? "There is a compatibility problem with your specific motherboard."

So, after updating the BIOS for my motherboard, a process that most first-time CPU upgraders will have no clue how to do and will never have thought about in the first place, I finally got it to work.

I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is the definition of "first-timer" someone with 7 years of computer building experience?

Powering Up
After that little installation scenario, I was relieved that the Spectra 400 did, indeed, work. The BIOS detected the processor as an AMD K6-2 400MHz and Windows did so also. Did I notice an immediate improvement in speed? You can say that. The speed improvement wasn't stellar, though, but things were noticeably faster. I let my brother use the machine for a while without telling him about the upgrade being installed and he soon concluded that I had "done something to his computer."

So, with everything in place, let's start benchmarking!

On to: Benchmark Results