From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 15 15:24:24 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.velosystems.net (cx144844-b.pv1.ca.home.com [24.9.137.174]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EFE437B41C for ; Tue, 15 Jan 2002 15:24:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from velosystems.net (jeeves [192.168.1.6]) by mail.velosystems.net (Postfix) with SMTP id AC79250783; Tue, 15 Jan 2002 15:24:18 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 15:24:18 -0800 From: Steve Wingate To: "Mike Meyer" Cc: bsdneophyte@yahoo.com, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: dual processor setup... Message-Id: <20020115152418.4a02842b.steve@velosystems.net> In-Reply-To: <15428.33350.673321.913186@guru.mired.org> References: <70536970@toto.iv> <15428.33350.673321.913186@guru.mired.org> Organization: Velosystems X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.0 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386--freebsd4.5) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > Also, if the processors were of a different stepping, would it matter?> > Yes. At least for Intel CPUs, SMP systems have to have CPUs that all > have the same stepping. This is an old wives tale that has little, if any, basis in fact. There is a myth that in order to run multiple CPU's, they need to be the same stepping and cache size. This is not true. According to Intel, you must have the same family of processor, and that's it. In fact, according to Intel, you can even mix MHz! They say that if you clock the processors to the clock speed of the slower CPU, you'll be fine. Mixing cache sizes is also OK by Intel, as long as you're not mixing 1MB or higher cache chips. You're best off if you have the same speed and cache processors, but if you have to try an SMP system you can use whatever is available. To further my point I once ordered dual Pentium III 600e cpu's and by mistake, the dealer sent me one 100mhz bus 600E and one 133mhz bus 600EB. The system not only booted normally, it worked fine for several days. I didn't even notice they were diferent until I went to overlock them. At that point I obviously returned one of the cpu's to match the other. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message