Athlon XP 1

[BChumie]

Hello,

I posted this message before and it got deleted for some reason. Basically I am upgrading from and athlon to and athlon XP. My motherboard and everything I have are compatable so that is not an issue. The problem I am having is - do I need to reinstall windows XP? I have posted this on the windowsXP forum and I just need as much feedback as possible inorder to make a decision. Basically I want to save my self hours of work if I do not have to reinstall. I know the athlon XP has newer chip instructions but couldn't windows accomidate for this by just installing new drivers for the processor only? Again just so we are clear, I am only changing the processor. The mother board I have (Epox 8k7a rev 1.1) supports that processor and all of my hardware should support it <<knock on wood>>

Thanks for any response,
Brad

Also if this is an imappropriate post for this forum please let me know. I don't understand why my original one got deleted because this does have to do with a hardware upgrade.

 

[huffbr]

You should be fine. I'd be surprised if you had any problems with it. Just as long as you are sure your motherboard supports Athlon XP processors.

 

[RiverGuy]

From what I have heard, never actually tested, mind you, is that in order to take advantage of the new SSE instruction set that are on Athlon XP's, and Morgan Durons, you would need to reinstall the OS. I'm not sure if this is true for every Windows OS or not, but I have heard it from numerous people.

That would be the ONLY reason why I would reinstall it.

 

[Hungster]

Brad,
assuming you do not switch mb right ?
then everything is fine

 

[BChumie]

hungster,

I am not switching motherboards. Thank you to everyone who replied. Does anyone know of a test to see if the SSE instructions are working properly? That way I will install it then run windows, test to see if my proc is able to do SSE like it is supposed to then either format and reinstall or just leave it depending on the results. Thanks for the advice, again if anyone has ever done this please let me know. I will also post my findings here when I do my tests.

Thanks,
Brad

 

[Hungster]

np. check out your LCD thread, i posted some info on LCD there

 

[cdogg]

You could download a trial version of SiSoft Sandra's benchmark, which would surely tell you whether SSE is present.

Also, when you want to find a message you posted in the past, click the My Threads link in the upper-left of the screen (right below where it says &quot;Hi BChumie&quot. Your post from August 6th is still there... ;-)

~cdogg

&quot;The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.&quot;
- Albert Einstein

 

[cdogg]

Sorry, My Threads is only to see threads that you've posted in - not the ones you created.

To see those, you would have to click &quot;See what other members can see about you&quot; in the upper right, and then click on where it says &quot;started xx threads&quot;.

- xx is the # of threads you've created to date

~cdogg

&quot;The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.&quot;
- Albert Einstein

 

[BChumie]

cdogg,

Thanks for your help! I apologize to everyone on this forum for the duplicate entries!!!



Brad

 

[RiverGuy]

I'm not sure if Sandra will show if SSE is enabled, although I think so. I once installed a Morgan Duron, and it gave me MM scores with SSE showing. Now whether or not it just uses that as a label because it knows the core is SSE compliant or whether it really tests it, I don't know.

It is unlikely you would be using SSE anyways in your apps. SSE is not totally widespread, but some apps do take advantage of it.

 

[DBSSP]

The instruction set will show an indication in Sandra. But I would think that if the instruction set was screwing up the chip itself would causing a lot of problems due to the set being hardware imbedded....It's not really up to the app to use the instruction set as all apps are run through the cpu and the cpu enchances anything graphical and such through the instruction set. There's no bypass. Now some games and such may have alternative hardcode to allow themselves to incorporate more instructions (Hardware programming) to tell the chip what to use the SSE with, otherwise SSE is always active and looking to improve features that have some sort of graphical or multimedia threads. I could be wrong or explaining it backwards, perhaps a little better explanation from someone will shed further light on the this subject. In the meantime I'm going to hunt up some articles on the subject. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;

 

[RiverGuy]

DBSSP,

It was my understanding that it functioned similar to AMD's own 3DNow! in that if the app wasn't written to take advantage of it, it would not use it. Maybe I am wrong on this.

 

[DBSSP]

I'll find an article about it. But an example of how I believe it works is like this;

You one water line that splits into two (information/data). There is a valve (embedded-SSE) that has to be manually turned (via extra instructions). Water flows down the pipe into the valve and down one side with a paper filter (non-refined, but slightly improved data). You turn the valve to the other line with a water softener (via extra instructions). The water is refined and much better than the original tap through a paper filter (data/media is vastly improved). Does this help my explanation till i get an article? Who knows, we may both be wrong at the rate this is goin, lol. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;

 

[RiverGuy]

http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/palomino/6.shtml

 

[DBSSP]

I just found the same article. Wow I was right (No bragging intended)! I think my water example is more understanable though, lol. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;

 

[RiverGuy]

DBSSP,

From what I read, it said the app has to be optimized for SSE. Meaning, yeah SSE will help in PhotoShop, but not in PowerPoint maybe.

 

[DBSSP]

You get a major gain in performance if the application is optimized for the instruction set. But the application does not need to have any code to be specifically effected. Anything that introduces some kind of multimedia (graphics, video, sound, etc.) is effected in some way by SSE. To take full advantage it has to be optimized. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;

 

[cdogg]

DBSSP,

I'm a little confused. You said in your first post:

It's not really up to the app to use the instruction set as all apps are run through the cpu and the cpu enchances anything graphical and such through the instruction set. There's no bypass.

It sounds like you were saying that all apps & processes use SSE regardless if they're optimized for it or not. Riverguy was trying to say that SSE is only used if the app was written for it. That is true.

Check the following sites for an explanation:

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~m2wang/cs690b/simd.htm

- &quot;To support the new instructions, additional hardware were added on the die (registers, FP units, etc.). But note that the additional hardware does nothing if the software does not use the new instructions&quot;

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/rtraytracing/

- &quot;source code is written in Assembler and has three versions for different processors which differ in the instructions used&quot;


~cdogg

&quot;The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.&quot;
- Albert Einstein

 

[DBSSP]

What I meant is that all programs have to go through and be checked out by SSE for additional optimization. If there is no media or additional, optimized data, then data passes through SSE unaltered and unimproved. But I do stand corrected. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;

 

[DBSSP]

At any rate if the SSE is malfunctioning or not present as it should be, then the CPU would be malfunctioning. Which I think was the original point I was trying for. Jay
&quot;If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?&quot;