Definitive Answer: Dell Precision 490 older revision board DOES take Xeon E5345 " Clover Town " - BUT

[Freddybaby]

It took me some digging, so, here it is:

You have to downgrade to bios revision A00 or A01 first
After doing so, your older rev will boot up for you with one or two E5345 installed
( With A02-A08 bios you get the Sytem Halted ! Alert ! Incompatible processor detected" )
I don't remember the cutoff date but mine all predated that in shipping by many months

AND

The bios sees each processor as a dual core cpu with 4mb cache
I think maybe because these processors are a couple of dual core cpus welded together?
What do I know

But windows can see all eight cores
I haven't played with verifying that it's using all the cache / cores for sure, but definitely shows activity in task manager across all eight cores

Any input is greatly appreciated as I may have many many more 490s coming and would love to sell them as dual quad xeon machines

Thanks!!

 

[hang-the-9]

Don't now about this issue, but I have not seen a BIOS that will let you flash to an older version without swapping the chip, at least in a long time.