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To: Charles Gryba who wrote (79329)	5/4/2002 11:24:23 AM
From: Elmer	Respond to of 275872

EP, you were right about the two Athlon MPs working OK together even though they are rated at different speeds. Yup. When you think about it, all the outside world sees is the bus. EP

To: Charles Gryba who wrote (79329)	5/4/2002 4:47:30 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

"EP, you were right about the two Athlon MPs working OK together even though they are rated at different speeds." No, he is wrong. He has no foggiest clue about dual processor system configuration. You just are lucky, and if it boots, it doesn't mean it is OK for everything, especially under Windows. There are many reasons why Microsoft recommends identical processors. First, the steppings must be better identical. The MS-Intel dual specifications assume that the bootstrap processor is chosen at random upon cold start, so there might be difficulties in configuring two different processors - there might be different configs and microcode patches. More important, the OS uses some CPU speed detection to calculate values for several delay loops to handle legacy hardware - ports, floppies, etc. The system does not keep track of these parameters for processors separately. When tasks/threads are randomly assigned to processors during normal OS operation, they will generate different timings when doing I/O, and this might cause system "instability". In short, there is no reason to inflate Elmer's contribution to this thread by "kissing his ass". - Ali