Dual CPU Board-Different CPU Speeds possible?

[Bellbus]

I'm building a dual Athlon Board (Windows XP Prof).

I've already got a Athlon 2000MP chip + the ECC Ram needed.

Can I mix chip speeds (the motherboard has not been bought yet). ie. can i have 1x2000MP + 1x2400MP chip, or do both have to be the same speed 2x2000MP chips.

If I do mix them, will the motherboard automatically increase the workload to the higher CPU (in other words the machine will not run as if it actually had 2x2000MP chips).

Am I right in thinking that an Athlon MP chip can be used as a normal single XP chip until the Dual board is bought.

Thanks

[Peter M]

Technically, on Athlon MP architecture where every CPU has its own front side bus, you can have mixed CPU speeds.

However, whether the board's BIOS supports that is a different question. And the biggest doubt is whether your operating system of choice is going to be able to make any kind of sense of this.

On the bottom line, you should go with identical processors.

[Bellbus]

Thanks Peter... I had noticed a tendancy among these boards to keep to the same speed, I just wasn't sure whether it was by choice.

what a pain.... the chances of another single working 2000MP appearing cheap on Ebay are remote. If i was to buy one new I wanted to buy a higher end CPU, and then upgrade the 2000MP later when I had a little more cash (and the cost of the CPU came down).


Thanks
Gordon

[causticVapor]

Yeah, methinks the term for it is asymmetric multithreading - the faster CPU gets more of the processing burden, etc. to balance things out...

Some programs know how to perform AMP, while many freak out, or simply load the CPUs evenly based on the slower CPU, so you don't get the benefits of one faster CPU

Some OS's don't like it as well as Peter mentioned.

If you do do this, the primary CPU should always be the faster one

[saimyc]

great question

I always wanted to ask that even though I don't have a dual mobo.

I learn a lot by just reading the threads

thanx guys

sorry for butting in on your thread