Should I reinstall my OS after my new Athlon XP?

[Liquidsky]

Just got my Athlon XP yesterday and well I read somewhere that I should reinstall the OS after upgrading to an Athlon XP because the cpu has SSE and windows is suppose to make use of it. But only after a reinstall. I don't know if that's true or not. What do you guys think? Don't really want to do reinstall cause otherwise I'll probably be spending the whole day resetting it up. But hey I guess for the performance benefit it's worth it right.

[bdf24]

I really don't see why you'd need to reinstall to get the full use of the chip. Once you stick it in, windows should see it and utilize all the features.

[David]

Theres a little program called tweak-xp which can make windows xp use the right optimisations. I would imagine windows should do it anyway.

[dugans]

I usually do a new install when I change a cpu anyway: gets rid of all the clutter that builds up in Windows Any Version!

My theory: why bother with a new chip and leave all that junk that is robbing the pc of performance on there?

[David]

The way I see it is that 'that junk' might be 50MB of windows update drivers (I connect at 48k if im lucky) and all of your documents. I find it a pain to have to reinstall. A waste of a day that could be spent on these forums :D

[Liquidsky]

Yeah I probably won't reinstall cause i think that windows supposed to auto-detect too. But on the other hand I can't get Vcool to cool down my CPU anymore. I have to enable the IDLE LOOP in order for it to cool down. Man! Windows is just starting to really stress me out. Every Windows OS has been a real headache at times.

[David]

I think M$ have done well with XP. I fail to find any problems with it.

[el]

well I remember someone saying the reason to upgrade but for the life of me I can't remember. I think your apps may need to be reinstalled to take advantage as well. run sandra first and see if it sees sse.

[David]

If you right click on My COmputer in XP and choose Hardware and then Device Manager. You will see that XP detects the appropriate CPU(s) and sets up the appropriate optimisations.

[wolfsid]

Originally posted by penguinfreak
If you right click on My COmputer in XP and choose Hardware and then Device Manager. You will see that XP detects the appropriate CPU(s) and sets up the appropriate optimisations.


i am pretty sure you might only need to update for a chip swap but if you swap out mobo you need a full reinstall... marry christmas all...:beer:

[nil_esh]

If you are running NT/2000/XP, changes like motherboard require a reinstall (custom drivers for your hardware are installed). Might be the same for CPU change, I dunno. If it works, it works, so don't worry about. If you have to upgrade, you can use backup to backup everything including your settings. And then restore the backup after the reinstall.

[minoukat]

Download WCPUID and check if it says SSE is supported. If it isn't, you'll need to reinstall the OS to make it support SSE

[David]

I changed from Duron to Athlon tb - no problems.

[minoukat]

Originally posted by penguinfreak
I changed from Duron to Athlon tb - no problems.

But the Tbird and Spitfire Durons are about the same, just with a different amount of cache. They don't have different instructions added to one or the other. That's not the case with an XP, as they have SSE

[Crash893]

you should do an experiment for us

do some bench marks before and after let us know if there is a diffence

[wolfsid]

Originally posted by crash893
you should do an experiment for us

do some bench marks before and after let us know if there is a diffence

There is a difference why else would they put sse on there

[Crash893]

not before and after the new cpu

put the new cpu with the old os and take a bench mark then reinstall it and tell us if there is a diffence