SSE disabled by default on Athlon XPs? Huh?

[MichaelD]

OK, I'm confused. I was reading some of Anand's aritcles on the Athlon XP to really familiarize myself with it, since I'm getting one next week (finally). I was reading THIS ARTICLE and came across this sentence:



<< SYSMark 2001 was run with the Athlon XP's SSE instructions enabled. For more information on why they are disabled by default read our explanation entitled: SYSMark 2001: The Benchmarking Controversy. >>



Does this mean that when i get my KT266A mobo/XP combo up and running for the frist time that SSE WILL NOT be enabled? How do I correct this? BIOS settings?

Thanks for your help.

 

[rmblam]

<< For more information on why they are disabled by default read our explanation entitled: SYSMark 2001: The Benchmarking Controversy. > >>

<---- Did you read this?

There is an AMD CPU Patch at the windows update site (for XP anyway), but it may not be for the SSE issue. Not sure to tell the truth.

 

[Mem]

<< Does this mean that when i get my KT266A mobo/XP combo up and running for the frist time that SSE WILL NOT be enabled? How do I correct this? BIOS settings? >>



Well on my Epox 8KHA+ board it`s enabled in BIOS so you really only have two choices with the BIOS SSE setting "enable or disable". It always a good thing to check all BIOS settings ,on mine if I load optimised defaults the USB keyboard setting is set as disabled by default so I just go through all the settings to make sure it`s all set right.

Btw mine (SSE)was enabled in BIOS the first time I booted it up.
.

 

[FishTankX]

Problem is this. Bapco used an older verison of windows media encoder which didn't use identify SSE on the AthlonXP. To get it to work you need a patch for windows media encoder. As to wether or not SSE will work depends on if you reinstall the OS or not. It will properly detect SSE on a *clean* install of an OS. That means either reinstall or reformat, with reformat being preferable. There are no problems with SSE being disabled on the AthlonXP. It's impossible to disable SSE on an AthlonXP.

 

[FishTankX]

Oops! You can disable it. Hehe, I didn't know that you could disable SSE, Mem. Then again, i've never even seen a T-bird system running in real life until about 2 months ago and never saw an AthlonXP system before, never even seen the Naked CPU's IRL so I'm AthlonXP ignorant cept for what I read. Anyways, SSE should be enabled by default. make sure you do a clean OS install though.

 

[MichaelD]

*Whew* OK, I feel better now. Thanks very much. Whenever I have a new system/fresh install, I do go thru the BIOS settings one-by-one to ensure that everything is up-to-spec. On my current main rig, for example, tweaking the bios results in almost a 50% performance boost from using the "optimized settings."

Thanks much...I can't wait to join the 133FSB/AthlonXP ranks! me\<---excited!