Hi, can anyone clear this up for a friend of mine.... he says that dual Cpu's dont have to be at the same speed... i told him he is a crazy "d"uck .. please post as many threads here proving me right... oh and i have a legit question as well.. if i do Dual my cpu's can i use 1 Slot 1 chip and another socket 370 with a Slot 1 converter??
it may be stupid but i hafta ask....

Thanks to all

Ok here is your answer.

1. To have a dual CPU setup both CPU's must be the same speed and also have the same model and stepping. In other words they have to identical. So your friend is wrong.

2. Yes you can have a slot 1 and a socket 370 or Flip Chip PGA CPU using the converter in the same system as long as they are the same also. I have built 2 systems using a Slot 1 P3 933 and the Flip Chip PGA 933.

Just make sure they are the same model and stepping and also speed and you should be fine.

...

Wrong!

One of my rigs is as follows:
Abit BP6 with one Celeron 500 running at 600 MHz (80 fsb x 7.5) and one Celeron 466 running at 560 (80 x 7).
There is no problem at all.
The only mandatory thing obviously is that they have to run at the same fsb speed.
They can run at different core voltage settings and frequencies.
Whatever the positions of the processors in socket #1 or socket #2, the bios will randomly boot from one or the other.
Acpi works perfect and Win2k reports MPS multiprocessor, as will any utility such as Wcpuid report 2 processors.

Ok!!!

Damn I'm wrong, that sucks.

Sorry Ronin...
BTW I discovered this works by pure chance.
I assembled this box from various bits and pieces laying around to make a dedicated Q3A server on my home lan.
I was the first one surprised when I booted it up first time

Oh so crap!! you can have 2 CPU's at different speeds .... is that the conclusion?
well i guess you learn somehting new everyday. If anyone has any more Dual Cpu with different speed configurations i would like to know what the speeds are and how stable the system is....
Thanks

Well, all you have to do is think about it logically and you cant really go wrong.. CPU's are multiplyer locked (well, lets hope the ones that your planning on using are). It doesnt matter what you set your system multiplyers to, it will have to run at whatever the cpu says. Then theres bus speed which you have to set. Just as long as the CPU's are both happy with the bus speed you set then you should be fine, in theory. I have a p3-800 (8x100) and a p3-500 (5x100) in the same system - the key being that they both share the same bus speed.

Ya you can have 2 different ones in the same system I guess, but you are not doing your system any justice by let's say having 1 800 and 1 500. If it's a choice over having a dual setup with 2 different cpus I'll take just having the faster of the 2 in my system.

Could i run a PIII 500 and a PIII 600 (both with 100 fsb) in a mobo with a 133 fsb??

I have a PIII 500E [100 FSB], and my motherboard is capable of the 133 FSB, but I just go into the BIOS and set it to 100.

On a slightly different issue, I've heard that my particular chip is not capable of SMP. Can anyone verify this?

Thanks,
-bZj

I don't know of a single PII or PIII cpu that won't work in SMP. It's not the CPU that matters in SMP but the motherboard. Yes the PIII 500E will work just fine.

For those of you who want to go SMP, I offer this bit if info.

Unless the applications that you run (games) are written to take advantage of SMP, you won't see any difference. Quake 3 has SMP support built in but it does not always work right or not work at all. Alot of SMP problems that people have are not just with the application but with the other hardware in there system.

If you have 2 cpus laying around I would suggest building a second computer out of it rather that going SMP. Now if you are going to do Cad or anything that is high cpu intensive then SMP is the way to go. Having SMP support for say running an application server or database server anything that requires high calculations then it helps.


Hope the above helps you all out.

Ronin, you are not wrong per say..
Abit BP6 is the ONLY motherboard that can work with 2 CPUs that run at different speeds. The rest of the motherboards requare the same CPU's.
The steping of the CPU is for stability reasons.. WindowsNT likes to have 2 identical CPU's.

P3 are and aren't SMP compliant.
If you have P3 revision B0 or later then it is SMP, A0 can't do SMP (FC-PGA format)

Theres some intel compatability list somewhere and it says some of their p3's are NOT smp capable.

Well ive found the answer.. thanks for all of the help... i contacted Tyan and they said that the different speeds are ok .. you just haft to have the same type and stepping.. "oh hell here's the email itself"


Dear Sparkhard,

You need to make sure that the cpu's you are using have to be the exact same
type of processors with the same SL and SY stepping numbers on them.

good luck

so there it is... thanks to all