Dual Trouble?

[Eriksen]

Hi there,

At my company we are about to order a few dual Athlon systems. Our normal source for hardware is the Danish importer of MSI boards, so MSI's upcoming dual board was of course our first choice. However, this board seems to be delayed until the end of this year, whioch is too long to wait for us 🙁

So, the alternative is the Tyan Tiger board, which is also in short supply, btw. but should still be available locally.

Do any of you know of any instability issues with the Tiger board at all?


Now for the choice of processor:

When we first started looking for a dual AMD solution, the 1200MHz Palomino MP porcessors were the obvious choice, but now that the 'standard' Palomino processors are available at higher frequencies, is that the way to go?

I have read many contradicting stories about the new Palomino's SMP capabilities, compared to the MP processors. Aren't they the same chips? And if not, what's the difference?

From what I have heard, the Tyan boards will run dual with any socket A processor, which should also include the new Palominos. Or are these CPUs 'SMP locked'?

Can anybody help me shed some light on this issue please? 😀

In short: Will a Tyan Tiger board with two Athlon XP +1800 (for instance) be better than the 'officially improved' solution with two Athlon 1200 MP chips? Any drawbacks to this solution?


P.S.

The machines will be pure 'number crunchers', with no need for RAID, SCSI or fancy server stuff 🙂

 

[Pariah]

The initial batch of standard XP CPU's may work in SMP, but they are not tested or approved to do so. Some people have gotten it to work, others haven't. There is no lock in place at this time, but since there is no guarantee and this is for a business, I'd avoid the potential headaches and wait for the official XP MP CPU's. It's basically luck of the draw as to whether it works or not. If you need a number of systems odds are some of the CPU's won't work in dual config.