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Paint Yourself An Athlon MP
SNIa asks: "How many people are checking the prices of AMD chips after seeing this?" and points out this article at HardwareZone.com about modifying Athlon XP processors to perform like MPs. No guarantees, except a voided warranty.
. However, do note that connecting these pads together does not automatically modify the CPU into an Athlon MP. It stays as an Athlon XP.
It doesn't change the performance of the chip, only allows you to run two of the newer XPs in a dual motherboard.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"However, we cannot guarantee if it would run stable as some users reported problems with dual XP systems."
... can anyone he frying ...
I think this is the understantment of the century,
Cruise TT
AMD are gonna love that article...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
i'm waiting for someone to show how to modify windows to be a multi-user OS, then i'll be impressed :).
that they would have this capability, although disabled. I mean they just cripple the chip so that they can get more cash out of the MP versions, smart move unless you wan't another fiasco like the celeron/pentium II.
:)
The bottom line is that only a few hobbiests and nerds are going to go to this length to get it working, certainly not many businesses are going to accept this. So AMD makes it difficult enough so that you can't do it at the flick of a switch, but you can with a little guts (and silver paint). Seems like a win/win situation to me.
Also don't forget it may be easier just to use a couple of Durons to accomplish this task, dirt cheap too
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
What is the difference between the two? Put another way, why go through all the hassel?
While serving the purpose of locking the cpu for ordinary people, these small bridges on top of the cpus have attracted all the HW geeks which have unlocked, overclocked, underclocked (to get a quiter system)these cpus.
One of the biggest strength in the Athlon line (in my opinion) is that AMD have been able to sell locked cpus to 90% of the population but have made it possible for the last 10% to overclock these cpus. They have won both the normal consumers and the techfreaks in that respect.
.... ofcourse it also helps that their cpus are affordable and that there are plenty of them!
Thomas S. Iversen
On the second page:
:)
Approved by Jimmy Tang on Friday, 15th of March,2002 [...]
Below is where you'll find the bride.
Being Friday, maybe the thought of getting layed enhanced his sense of humor...
For a while I thought it was like the Pentium III...
spoiler...
now how do you get an athlon XP chip to act as a MP chip? just paint it up so it thinks it's an MP chip.
This is taking overclocking to the next level. The kind of people who do this sort of thing have always had the "warranty voided" hanging over their heads.....
... I think tech writers use this spiel instead of the less friendly "we are not going to be held responsible if you fsck up"
What I would be keen on is for someone who has done this to tell us how stable their machine is.
I am yet to read a article on overclocking etc that does not say that some users have experienced problems...
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
The article never got out of POST... It's a nice though that just because you fooled the motherboard into thinking the CPU's have MP support they really do. This article proves nothing to me. Not until I see some *nix (or NT I guess) boot up and utilize both CPU's I'll just assume it's wishful thinking. Like setting your 500MHz celeron to 3 GHz and watching it post for about 3 seconds right before the chip burns :p
Can anyone link to a better site? one that does actual so it working?
.. of people who paint up thier cps to pretend to be "other" cpu's. not my style.
hit you with a HAMMER....
I have worked in AMD's R&D department for the last six years. I was pretty involved in development of the XP and MP series in particular. Let me make clear that modding XP chips to work as MPs is a bad idea and will most likely result in one or two cooked CPUs within a month.
Yes, we know about the trace. We put it there to differentiate between the XP chips which contained our hacks to make it play nice in multiprocessing systems (aka the Athlon MP), and the chips not containing those hacks (aka the Athlon XP). Think of it like this: converting your car to diesel would give a great increase in fuel mileage, but it cannot be achieved by simply adding a "DIESEL FUEL ONLY" decal by the gas tank.
I don't want to sound elitist and say "Leave the chip-mods to the pros", but sometimes chip mods have an amateurish feel to them. Please, don't wreck your systems. Leave the traces on the XP chips alone.
(posting anonymously to protect my job)
Looks like it's time for a new rig. I'll get:
What would be really cool is if you had clear tubes
and a special die in the water that changed colors by temperature.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
This could come in very useful when you're trying to MP-enable your chip.... or maybe you can unlock the multiplier and MP enable it at the same time? =) BWAHAHA.... Where else, but Tom's? =)
-Berj
I dont see how this is much diffrent
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
do those "hacks" you mention actual warrant the 80 to 100+ dollars cost increase AMD puts on the MP series?
The other good thing about this approach is that corporate customers, who are sensitive to warranties and need to cover their asses, will never overclock these processors. So, effectively, they can offer a bit of extra power as a sweetener, but only to techfreaks.
You want me to put make-up on my CPU? What's next? a pink leotard and a tutu?
sigfault. comment dumped.
Somehow I don't think so. It might not work right, it might crash, but burn? Umm, how exactly is that going to happen? As for protecting your job - perhaps posting in something other than your actual name? You didn't actually use your name for your account did you?
;)
Seriously, I'm not trying to flame but claims that it will burn in a month or so sound awfully thin. Your going to have to either explain it a little better or point to some evidence of this occuring somewhere. Guess we'll know "in a month or so" one way or the other huh? BTW - all those neato' hacks made it into the Duron but not the XP?!
One thing the article did NOT give and that I hope the next one will is BENCHMARKS. On the off chance that this guy isn't trolling benchmarks ought to tell us if both CPUs are actually being used by the OS and if those "hacks" are actually for real. Compare it to SMP Durons for instance - is it much faster? I'd also be interested in hearing more about what SMP MBs work best - I nearly bought the Tyan this weekend
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
At Radioshack or WallMart?
Any specific brand names I should be looking for?
Ok big deal. Why would your CPU fry when it worked just fine before with the trace not cut? All you are doing is reconnecting that trace.
Sheesh. Sad to see FUD coming from AMD... :(
Look for defroster repair paint. It'll be in a tiny bottle and is copper colored. It's got copper in it and is used to (duh) repair the copper defrogger lines on windows. It will work fine for this but it's pretty thin so be careful it doesn't run. Sometimes masking is a good idea but be careful that the "paint" doesn't wick under the tape. Just maybe use a toothpick to dab on the paint - you don't need much on there as it's a logic connection not something carrying amperage. In the past #2 lead pencils have been used for a removable solution. However this is much trickier IMO and is somthing I'd only try for test purposes.
P.S. Yeah, there are actually places that sell conductive paint but they're usually not as common as an auto parts place. I'm not sure that RatShack actually carries this stuff but I guess it would be worth a shot...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
The last thing you want to do is play around with your XPs! They are the most fragile pices of anything I've ever seen. If you however decide to play around with them, remember that the processor die is like a small ant, put a little pressure on it and it will die. One has to be really careful when attaching the heat sink. And never ever try to run it even for a fraction of a second without a heat sink and a fan, it will die immediately, probably destroying your motherboard.
Let this be a warning!
Be careful when playing around with an Athlon XP!
and you make a good point I didn't catch earlier.... If what this guy is saying is true than the MP CPUs have a different core? Like the Celerons right? Umm, yeah I don't think so. I seem to recall the Duron core is the same too with some memory cells lasered? Why would the XP CPUs that were produced awhile back be SMP enabled and not the ones being produced now? It simply makes more sense that AMD has cut a trace in order to pull more money from MP labeled CPUs. As others have stated - businesses won't do this, only enthusiasts who won't give a fig for the warranty. AMD gets money fom the majority of their targetted audience with this and the enthusiest enjoys it too - smart! This same sort of thing happened with the Celeron until the bastards at Intel cut an internal trace on the CPUs. I'm STILL pissed about that! ocked multipliers? Intel can BITE ME.
;-)
Benchmarks are what we need to see in order to confirm this. That will be icing on the cake and prove whether or not this is worth doing. A comparison with Duron and MP SMP setups running about the same speed on the same board would be VERY helpful. For that matter do it on a couple of boards so I know which performs the best - I want one NOW!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Since the article is more or less slashdotted, here is how to modify the chip to work on a multiprocessor board:
Complete the topmost L5 bridge if it is cut. They use conductive paint. Now the XP is detected as an MP for the multiprocessor boards.
Of course, the stability of this is questionable, and no one except yourself should take responsibility for it.
This
If the XP and MP cores are the same then what exactly is the difference? The BIOS says XP instead of MP? AMD maybe did some testing? Perhaps the cut trace is the result of a failed test? Or more likely a marketing gimmick like the locked multipliers onthe Intel CPUs? "Hey Bernie, we're out of 500mhz CPUs could ya' downgrade some of the 1gig units?" As yield increases on established CPU lines this really does happen if there's a shortage of slower CPUs. I see no reason to believe that AMD isn't just as smart both with clock speeds and the SMP ability. As fast and as cheap as their CPUs are I've seen fit to go ahead and buy the higher speed units and not monkey with the multipliers but to save $80+ I'll be more than happy to mod an XP CPU's SMP jumper :-)
;-)
:-)
If AMD doesn't like this then they're going to have to be MUCH clearer about what's different even if it's just to say that it's added testing involved. It's not like the CPUs come with a report card telling you what failed and what didn't
Benchmarks man, we need benchmarks and lot's of them. I'm sure it won't be long before Annand, HardOCP, or heaven forbid Tom's (gak) get onboard with this and benchmark us to death.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Being as unpopular as they are, first because they're not in the wireless handheld mainstream and second because they're general purpose, there's very little accurate information on exactly how to make an Athlon XP run in dual mode. Some web pages say the bios must be reconfigured. Some say the bridge must be joined. Regardless of what it was, you can be sure it won't work next year and you'll have to pay a lot more for dual cpus, even if there still is such a thing next year.
Or does it still post as an XP? If it comes up as an MP then this is all the more telling IMO. I think this is a great hack and as soon as SMP AMD boards become a little more common I predict we'll see lot's of SMP AMD systems running around.
I've just about flushed all of the Intel systems off my home network and replaced them with AMD. A couple of old dualie Celeron are left but if the AMD stuff gets cheap enough those will go too. Sorry Intel but you guys have pissed me off with this PIV crap, the locked multipliers, RAMBUS, and the mods you hacked into the Celeron to prevent SMP operation. AMD is doing the enthusiest right as well as the consumer with their pricing. Go AMD!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
whoa this is just too much noose... overclockers have knowen about it for months and now the lashd0t cr0w3d Kn0ws. hiphip huRRay for you smaRty panTz!!!
Umm, Intel is in the wireless mainstream? What's that got to do with AMD XP CPUs?! You lost me there. Yeah, this is a general purpose CPU and not a mobile version - you know foks hacking mobile CPUs? Do tell, I'm al lears as to what's being done.
A BIOS reconfigure? That actually makes SOME sense. Much like the rewiring some of us had to do at first with the Celeron it's possible a BIOS hack could be done to get the MB to ignore the cut bridge and just assume SMP operation. The ABIT dual Celeron board was sort of like this in that it ignored the fact that the Celeron wasn't supposed to SMP. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do this again if they chose with the new CPUs. Maybe some of the MBs are allowing the BIOS to override the MP\XP switch? Do you have any URLs?
As for them stopping this - you can still unlock the multipliers right? To prevent that AMD would have to seriously change their internal processes and it would cost them more in cash and goodwill than it would to simply allow it. They're not losing much money if any by allowing hobbyists to do this. Start a business modifying\testing overclocked CPUs and they would probably get pretty upset - and have in the past - but I think this will be here awhile. Actually it's a shame Intel doesn't do their CPUs this way...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
at weekends I make-up as an MP.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
While I do realize (that's REALIZE with a 'Z' and NOT an 'S') that limeys/aussies/etc. commonly use the wrong conjugations of a certain verb (and commonly use sickeningly 'cutesy' slang words, as well)... let there be NO mistake. AMD is (note the use of 'IS' and not 'ARE') a single company and NOT a group of companies. It is (note the proper use of 'IS', once again) not a plural entity. Singular: one, plural: more than one.
AMD is a company. How ridiculous does it sound to say, "AMD are a company" or "It are a company"!?!? Quite.
How come they assume all their readership is male?
Read on dudes...
??
Now that's pathetic! He downgraded the original post himself, stated it was OffTopic, and a couple of pricks modded it down anyway?! Oh wait maybe he should have posted his response AC like the other guy did? Sad.
At least he was able to explain that AC and posting using a Nym aren't the same. Losers!
Durons are in fact a different core, unlike celerons. There is more to it than the cache.
My server
Seriously...if they work reliably, great. (I just want to know when another chipset maker will come out with a multiprocessor-capable chipset for Athlon; I recall reading that AMD doesn't really want to be in the chipset business...)
"Paint Youself An Athalon MP"
I thought this story was going to give me an idea for a costume party!!
I stole this Sig
This move will NOT make AMD more money.
The real source of MP chip sales is definitely system vendors, OEMs, etc., bigger organizations relying business on their "guarantee of MP operation", and can't take risk on individual chips; of course you might add the occasional enthusiast with more cash to throw into his/her system.
For normal individuals, however, SMP itself will probably not be enough to make them automatically buy such systems; with a highly probable chance that "normal" XPs could do the same, the scenario is entirely different...
For every such dual-XP system sold, AMD sells 1 extra XP processor, plus a sale of an AMD chipset motherboard. That's grabbing business from VIA, and together with the extra processor, are all sales that would NOT have gone to AMD on AthlonMPs
That's just my theory though....
IC speed is generally a part selection - all the parts are made the same, then tested and sorted by how fast they'll go. The slowest gate on the chip determines the speed limit. That's why testing matters; you may have 20 million gates that work at a high speed, and one that doesn't.
AMD's own CPU price list is interesting. The fastest MP is the 2000+, while the fastest XP is the 2100. Does this indicate a speed penalty for enabling multiprocessor mode? It may.
The faster processors cost far more than the slower ones, and it's unlikely that they really have a severe yield problem that requires this. It's unusual today for a fab to produce large numbers of substandard parts. Today, yields below 80% indicate serious problems in the fab. Some fabs report 99.5% yields. A decade ago, variability in the fab was much higher; a whole range of speeds came out, along with a sizable percentage of rejects. Today, the processes are much more uniform.
(Think about what this means. Sizable wafers are being produced with almost all the atoms where the design says they're supposed to be. That's an achievement. And then these bozos slap conductive paint on the pins and think they've done something cool.)
What you've said about cache and timings is spot on. However as others have pointed out AMD doesn't expect CPUs to be from the same stepping, lot, or anything else funky like you used to have to do with Intel. Hrm, does Intel still require this? It would seem that things have perhaps progressed? The systems don't appear to be quite so picky wouldn't you say? I'm also not yet sure that the MP CPUs undergoe any addtional testing over what the XP units do. Does anyone have hard evidence of this? An URL? I'd be interested in seeing the evidence as to what exactly is different. The fact that the original XP CPUs were shipped SMP enabled is still to be explained if this is the case. I'll grant that maybe MP CPUs get an extra test that the XPs don't but I'd also bet that many XPs would pass. Errors is one thing, burning quite another ;-)
As for voltage and heat. Oddly enough I've yet to see a CPU modify the voltage when I've put it into the MB. Each processor line has it's own spec and the voltage DOES change to that level but not anything different WITHIN the CPU line. You make it sound as if each CPU is tested and a voltage assigned based on that testing - NOPE! Do XP and MP CPUs of the same speed\core require different voltages? I've honestly not checked but I'll bet they don't. If a CPU works fine at a particular voltage single I'm not convinced that it's going to need any more or less voltage in an SMP configuration. If anything I'd guess more based on what I've seen overclocking. Care to offer evidence?
Lastly, as someone has already pointed out - an additional bit of voltage is NOT going to fry the CPU. This bozo is trying to say that simply running the CPU SMP is going to fry it, the more I think about this the more I think he's trolling. I've overclocked CPUs starting WAY back with 4mhz XTs and I've yet to have one fry as a result. I've bumped voltage, I've massivly bumped FSB, I've water cooled, Peltier cooled, and done all sorts of things to eek performance out. CPUs are actually pretty durable and simply tasking them differently ala SMP or even something intensive like Distributed.net isn't going to burn a CPU. Put a decent heatsink on it and use your brain - it'll be fine. Distributed.net's software bumps my CPU temps up a max of 10degrees - no biggie. How much would SMP operation bump the CPU temp? Not more than that I'm sure.
Theory is all well and good with this stuff but it seems that folks are running the XP CPUs SMP without reporting problems and in the end that's all the proof needed....
P.S. For some real fun measure the voltage fom your off-shore power supply with a good meter. It can get pretty bad! Not long ago I had the fan in a powersupply die on me - voltages across the board shot up. 12volts was pushing 14 and 5volts was closer to 5.4. Nothing fried but the added heat did indeed overwhelm the cooling on that CPU and it locked up after only a few minutes of run time. Slapped in a new fan and all was good - no damage. What you set in the BIOS ain't always what the rest of the system sees (shiver).
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Exactly. I guess enough people don't know the difference between the XP and the MP. Yes, they both use the Palomino core, which is SMP enabled already. The MP is just tweaked to perform better in an SMP environment. People have been using XPs and Durons in MP motherboards for quite awhile now. No news here, and in most cases there is nothing to "mod".
And what is the P2/Celeron fiasco? The celeron had a smaller onchip cache, and so it was cheaper. What's the issue with that?
Will the #2 pencil trick work for reconnecting the bridge? It worked on Thunderbird-core Athlons for the L1 bridges, doesn't work on Palamino-core Athlons for those bridges, but what about this bridge (L5)?
Background: L1 is cut to lock the clock multiplier. Reconnecting L1 lets you set whatever multiplier you want. Graphite from a #2 0.5mm mechanical pencil is just conductive enough to work. I did this successfully to two Athlon CPUs. They used a deeper cut on the Athlon XPs, so I decided to leave my XP 1800+ locked.
true but read on
It takes a very precise cache coherency protocol to make the whole system behave in a deterministic way. If one processor has a slight modification to the coherency protocol (say an extra delay cycle) that the other doesn't, then you're in for trouble.
This is true on a slot-1 style (ie P2/3) bus where both chips are on the same bus and snooping each other's transactions - Athlon uses the Alpha EV6 bus which doesn't work that way. Instead each CPU has it's own private bus to the north bridge which is responsible for managing cache coherency between CPUs. The CPUs simply respond to the cache commands from the bridge.
Even a single CPU (on a non-MP chip set) has to honor the cache coherency protocol
Having said that it's quite possible that there are cache transactions used in a real MP system that aren't needed for PCI support and AMD screwed up on their first silicon and didn't support all the cache transations correctly (not having an MP bridge around to test it on and all that) which might require a chip spin and an 'MP' version - but bug fixes like that are going to be in all their future parts (as a chip designer I know you don't touch stuff once it works right
I've been running to Athalon XP 1800+ 's in the dual proc board from Asus. My machine boots into WinXP Pro just fine and definately takes advantage of the dual processors (been watching cpu time and usage in the task manager) especially in 3D Studio. I just popped the chips in and the bios saw them as MPs. Does anyone know whats the min speed of the chips (1800, 1900, 2000?) that requires this mod?
BTW... I haven't had any system instability related to the dual XPs. I had serious crashes caused by the Creative drivers/spyware, and I've had problems with power (the computer drawing more than the UPS can handle and tripping it). The most important thing w/ the dual proc athalon boards is to make sure you have a 450 watt power supply (and suitable UPS) or the system will crash.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
You do it on purpose to say "athalon", don't you, just to spite us.
I run an overclocked Celeron 300 at 450 MHz with great success for well over a year. I've had no problems with stability and it seems to handle all of my software.
I'm not one who is timid about taking a measured risk in the pursuit of performance. My home server is a dog running at 200MHz. It may be a good candidate for replacement with a dual AMD server. I do want to be sure that it would be stable and run Linux, however.
I have never run AMD before so I'm interested in hearing any pointers both on the hardware side and on the OS side. ie Does Linux handle AMD straight out of the box or do I need to compile a special kernel?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Geez, some people... :)
There's a link at the end pointing to an update with benchmarks, so I think they did more than just POST.