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."

Comments

Possible DMCA violation?

[Sheetrock]

As with the Athlon XP, apparently this processor can be trivially modified to function as an MP chip. I'm curious, however, as to whether this could be perceived as a DMCA violation. If companies refilling ink cartridges can be sued these days...

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.

Re:Reasons for SMP

[afidel]

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.

Questions, external mod possible?

[zakezuke]

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.