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Modding The Barton XP To A Barton MP
Dr. Jackie Lee writes "Don't have the budget for an AMD Opteron? There's always a cheaper alternative with AMD's current Barton processors. In this article, we'll show you how to run these new Barton XP processors in SMP mode."
But another thing that troubles me somewhat is the idea that, perhaps, people are cheating AMD somewhat by doing this. Maybe the sales of Barton XPs are at a loss, but built with the same die as the MP because AMD doesn't want to blow the cash on retooling. If cheap CPUs are being subsidized by the sales of Barton MPs, aren't people who modify their CPUs performing the equivalent of, say, buying Windows XP Home and stealing Windows XP Server? It seems like a bit of a fuzzy issue, although with the popularity of P2P hardly one that's going to trouble most computer users.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It's mostly about the hack value. Everything I'd want to do properly with SMP I wouldn't trust my soldering skills to, such as compiling, rendering, or serving web pages, but I might try something like this if I had spare hardware lying around.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Does anyone know of a good introduction to modern PC hardware, the different processor cores and so on? I don't really know the major differences between Barton and Palomino. I'd like to know, partly for curiosity, but also because when I build PCs I may otherwise end up with something sub-optimal.
I'd also be interested in something that explains the structure of a PC system. What is the Northbridge, how is the PCI bus coupled to the processor, that sort of thing.
Mutlimedia, which is the only thing other than games that is pushing the PC at this point will generally get nearly 100% speed improvement from SMP. For instance I run a virtual studio using Reason and have all of my effects and the OS on cpu 0 and the program itself on cpu 1. This allows very low latency and the ability to run more effects without problems. Media encoding (where do you think all those mpeg4 rips come from =) is another task that is frequently done with SMP machines. Other than media though I really can't think of something that a home user would run that would need SMP.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Ok. Especially when talking about the brandnew 400FSB Barton: Which Chipset to run them on ?
In genereral, AMD still hasn't solved its chipset problem - worse for the MPs.
Tons of complaints from users of high end soundcards or videocards (not graphiccards) with SIS and especially VIA based Boards likely due to lousy PCI implementations.
AMDs own chipsets are terribly outdated and comparatively slow
nforce2 has no decent Linuxsupport (probably the same for *BSD). A least, as of yet.
Given the lack of heatspreader, that marketing joke with "3000+" and asynchronus RAM clock speeds, just for having a higher number do not really make AMD more sympathic or trustworthy.
One may sure argue, how much AMD is responsible for what VIA or SIS do. And no, I do not like Intel845 either.
Really sad, since I really do think the AMDs have the way better CPU design.
P4 sucks (how fast would it be against an equally clocked P-III ?), but righ now I do no see any alternative for the more demanding audience. Unfortunatly, since my PC brok recently. Right now I am stuck. Great Chipset and a lousy CPU or vice versa.
My point was, it depends on your definition of "work". Obviously, some avoidable hardware-caused instability is acceptable to you. It's not to some of us.
If it's a matter of just bridging a circut trace in order to reconise an xp chip vs an mp chip, isn't there perhaps external to the chip layer solution?
Either via a motherboard mod.... or CPU socket adapter.
I ask because the value of the XP chips starts at about $123 per unit (OEM) , where the motherboard starts at roughly $160 per unit. I'd rather modify a motherboard then a pair of chips. Motherboards are bigger, though surface mount, more able to accept wires rather then silver paint.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
IIRC, the key improvement of the Barton is that it has more cache (twice as much?) as the previous Athlon core. From what I recall, more cache is a BIG benefit in SMP systems, since you have two CPUs sharing the same memory. i.e. it's a surprise there aren't SMP-ready Bartons on the market because it's a perfect use for the extra cache.
Either way, it is capable of doing significantly (10-20%) more per clock cycle than the previous Athlon core.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I have done this mod to over 250 XP's and have never encountered one that didn't work properly and get exactly the same scores in benchmarks as real MPs. If there is a problem with them running correctly is is not in the processor being labeled as XP it is in the user doing somthing else wrong, like using a single processor and then switching to 2 later on, in windows XP it doesn't always work right, unless you reinstall windows, or something else that they are doing wrong, or AMD's horrible buggy 760mpx chipset. Hell, I mod xp1700 tbred b's to run as mp2400s all the time and they run great, and for the price even if you are not good at what you are doing you can afford to ruin two of them in the process and you have still saved money. To buy actual MPs is just stupid or lazy.