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AMD's X2 Driver


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Is the X2 driver which you can download from amd.com only used for cool and quit or does it have other functions as well?

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there is no driver needed for any cpu...the driver is usually only needed for special features of cpu's (C&Q being one such function/feature)

 

XP Pro is made for up to 2 physical cpu's.

 

Home is only made for a single physical cpu.

 

X2's are dual physical cpu's on a single core, sharing a memory controller, and count as 2 physical cpu's.

 

P4's on the other hand, are only single physical cores with Hyperthreading, (2 logical cores). Being the Intel was and still is the most widely used cpu mfg, Microsoft made sure the OS sees logical cores differently than physical cores.

 

The new Intel dual-cores will be like the AMD...physical cores...but the EE ones that are dual-core Hyperthreading-enabled, will be 2 physical cores, 4 logical cores (ie 2x P4 HT-enabled cpu's are still only 2 cpu's, but have 2 logical cores each, so 2x2 = 4 haha...yay angry can do math!)

 

now...since I don't have Home edition WindowsXP, I can't tell you if this has any bearing on anything (since i only have corporate editions of XP licensed to DFI that don't have the same restrictions like entering keys and asking to be validated and changing hardware restrictions etc.)

 

If someone has an X2 cpu, and both Home and Pro, and would like to check out if Home can really handle an X2...then let us know. To me though it seems sorta like SLI...a game that isn't compiled to natively handle 2 gpu's working together, might still see 2 gpu's and not know exactly how to handle them...which is why some games absolutely wont work or really suck with SLI *as i have found out the hard way lately trying to play a lot of my older games*).

 

and remember Home was built back when there were either 2 physical cpu's or more, or you had a single hyperthreaded P4 that wasn't really 2 cpu's, just a single cpu with 2 logical cores. Back then when XP was made, if you had 2 cpu's or more, they were true dual physical cpu's and you had no need to run Home anyway, you ran Pro or Linux etc since the cost of dual cpu's was too prohibitive as were the boards and memory to go with them.

 

I've yet to see a driver that could correct this, but nothing is impossible (but again, drivers for cpu's are only for special features like C&Q or Speedtep or cpuidle etc)

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