What's the difference between an Athlon "C", "MP" and nothing at all.

[Comp625]

I'm checking out Anandtech's CPU Price Guide.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=1569&p=2

What's the difference between a regular Athlon T-Bird, Athlon-C, and Athlon MP? The clockspeeds appear very similar (eg Athlon 1.2GHz, Athlon-C 1.2GHZ, Athlon MP 1.2GHz*)

 

[Viper GTS]

TBird 1.2 GHz = Thunderbird core, 100 MHz FSB
TBird 1.2c = Thunderbird core, 133 MHz FSB
Athlon MP 1.2 = Athlon4 core (XP/MP), 133 FSB, SMP tested

Viper GTS

 

[Bovinicus]

The MP is the same thing as the new Athlon XP core, it is just SMP enabled/tested.

 

[Comp625]

What's SMP enabled?

 

[Viper GTS]

SMP stands for Symmetric Multi Processing, or the ability to use the processor in a multi-processor environment.

All AMD processors are SMP capable, but only the MP's are "officially" supported.

For example, if you have two 1800+ XP's they will most likely work in SMP mode, but if they don't you won't have AMD's support. With MP's you would.

The cores are the same, but the XP's have not had their SMP circuitry tested.

Or so AMD says.

Viper GTS

 

[Athlon4all]

Athlon Thunderbird: Up to 1.4GHz, 200fsb, 256k of On-die L2 Cache running at same clock as the CPU Core. 0.18 Manufacturing tech.
Athlon-C or Athlon Thunderbird-C: up to 1.4GHz, 266fsb, otherwise same as regular Thunderbird
Athlon MP: Palomino Core, Runs on average 20% cooler than a Simiallry clocked Thunderbird, SSE Support, certified for Dual CPU (SMP) operation by AMD, and a couple other enhancements over the Thunderbird core. Up to 1900+ (1.6GHz)
Athlon XP: Same as Athlon MP, except not certified for SMP operation, up to 1900+ also.