XP or MP? Need a little info

shloader

Distinguished
Dec 24, 2001
231
0
18,690
I'm under the assumption that you NEED to use MP processors if you want to go dual yet the difference between MPs and XPs are just that and a letter, no performance difference. Is this true? Can I simply not use to XPs?

Intel is god, cleanroom is life, and the wafers are all that matter.
 

HeavyMetal

Distinguished
Oct 24, 2001
32
0
18,530
not true, u can use AXP's on some duel motherboards. im not 100% sure which 1's u can or cant but the MSI K7D Master-L is 1 that u can. b4 u get a duel motherboard. anyways, heres a link to hardocp about that particular motherboard http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/mainboards/msi/k7d/index.html and here is the info ur looking for if u dont feel like reading all of it...
CPUs: We did experiment with CPUs, and I know the big question looming in your minds is this, "Will AthlonXP CPUs work in the K7D?" Oh yes, and work just fine they did. Sets of AthlonXPs in 1800+ and 2000+ ratings were used and turned in results very similar to our AthlonMPs. Be advised that TBirds will not work in pairs on this board and neither will Duron CPUs.

BTW, only go for duel processors if u run programs that use them, if u dont use SMP enabled programs then the duel processors will be a waste of money
 

peteb

Distinguished
Feb 14, 2001
2,584
0
20,780
There has been no demonstrated case where dual XPs failed to run on any dual AMD board.

You will only get warranty support if you have MPs.

Potentially there is the risk that in future BIOS releases XPs (could) be disabled, but I think it unlikely they would bother. You can always stay at the current BIOS release if that happened.

There is no functional difference between an XP and an MP. The difference is that AMD have tested and approve the MP for SMP operation. They do not perform this step with XP.

-* <font color=red> !! S O L D !! </font color=red> *-
To the gentleman in the pink Tutu
 

shloader

Distinguished
Dec 24, 2001
231
0
18,690
That's actually very interesting. So the MP stands for More Privilaged I guess. You know... This reminds me of the 486DX and SX debate.

I may wait on the .13 and hope the MP atleast has more cache. If not I'll try the fastest XPs.

Also do you have to completely reinstall win2K or will it just automatically detect the second CPU and require a restart?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by shloader on 02/14/02 11:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
G

Guest

Guest
I just built a system based on the MSI K7D Master-L, dual XP1600+ cpus, 512 MB Crucial non-registered PC2100 DDR SDRAM installed in DIMM slots 1&2. The bios actually sees the XP cpus as MPs, and when I use AMDs CPUID program to check the cpus, Proc 0 comes up as a "AMD Athlon MP 1600+", and Proc 1 comes up as "AMD Athlon MP", interesting.... WCPUID ver 3.0f shows both as AMD Athlon MPs.



Tim Clune