It's been a couple of years since I built a computer and I'm a bit out of the loop.. I've read a few brief things about "SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing)" and how Windows XP Home is no good with that.

So the question is: For an X2 processor on an AM2 mobo, do I need to buy XP Professional? I already have Home :?

Thanks!

Not that I've heard. I know XP pro has NUMA support and higher-end features, but you should be fine with X2 and Home.

http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwb [...] 12476.html

XP home is limited to one socket, whereas XP Pro is limited to two sockets. It does not matter whether there is one core in a socket or 4, although I think that XP can't do more than 4 or possibly 8 cores due to its kernel. I might be wrong with that though. I know that W2K didn't do more than two cores.