Opteron DP question

"Paul Gunson" <paulg DeleteThis @spammenot.com> wrote in message
news:btki58$5e4$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
 > i remember with my old PIII dual CPUs i had to buy them at the same time
 > so they would work in a DP system, do Opterons have tht same issue...?
 > ie could i buy a single Opti CPU for a DP board and buy the second CPU
 > months down the track...?

Well, you would have to make sure you get the Opteron 2xx series of
processors, of course. As for whether you can buy an Opteron now and a
second one later, there's never any guarantees; it's always possible that
AMD might find some multiprocessor behaviour that it tweaks thus changing
the Opteron's behaviour between minor revisions, thus making them not
entirely compatible. However, that being said, word is that the Opterons are
some of the most outstandingly multiprocessor friendly chips out there,
mainly due to its Hypertransport interconnects.

With Hypertransport, processors have a much easier time maintaining cache
coherency since it is a point-to-point interface and not shared-bus. In
fact, there is word that Hypertransport will be upgraded to 1Ghz (from
800Mhz) in the not too distant future, but likely whatever processors are
out there right now will continue to communicate at their own speeds.

I suspect that HTT is so flexible that you might even be able to run
different speeds of Opteron in the same motherboard. But I doubt it would
ever be supported though.

Yousuf Khan<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Opteron DP question 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 10:32:43 +1300, Paul Gunson <paulg.RemoveThis@spammenot.com>
wrote:
 >i remember with my old PIII dual CPUs i had to buy them at the same time
 >so they would work in a DP system, do Opterons have tht same issue...?

In a word, no. Actually the PIIIs really didn't have much of a
problem with that either, it was more a leftover piece of advice from
the Pentium and Pentium Pro days. Incompatibilities between
dual-processor PIII chips did exist, but they were pretty rare (I
don't know if it's still up, but Intel used to have a listing of which
PIII chips would work together and which wouldn't, most were fine but
there were a couple combos here and there that didn't work).

 >ie could i buy a single Opti CPU for a DP board and buy the second CPU
 >months down the track...?

Yup, shouldn't be a problem at all, as long as you get Opteron 2xx
processors each time. They should even work with different
frequencies, though I wouldn't test my luck on that one if I were you.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Opteron DP question 

On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:51:31 +0000, Yousuf Khan wrote:

<snip>
 > I suspect that HTT is so flexible that you might even be able to run
 > different speeds of Opteron in the same motherboard. But I doubt it would
 > ever be supported though.

Actually, SMP with varying speed chips is even supported with the MP(X)
chipset, although I've never read about anyone crazy enough to try it.

With the original posters question, he should be fine with his plan. You
haven't had to match CPU steppings in a long, long time.

--
Most people have two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason, and
the real reason.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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