XP - MP whats the diff????

Okay i'm shopping for a new PC and i finnally decided on an AMD so i'm looking around and i find that most places sell Athlon MP's for more than they sell XP's. What is the major difference in the too. FYI i'm not planning on overclocking, and if you can suggest a motherboard i'd be greatfull.

Thanks,
Karl

MP's are for dual processing. Buy these to have guaranteed compatibility for SMP.

MP is certified to run in SMP (dual processing) setup while XP is not. However, an XP can be easily modify to run in SMP setup just connection the L11 bridge or L15 bridge. The physical difference is very minor but price difference is like US$50. So, many OCer would just go ahead got two XP cpu and mod them to work as MP.

MPs also come factory unlocked in all speed grades.

A good motherboard would be a Gigabyte 7VAX. It's based on the KT400 chipset but is stable (which is what GIgabyte is known for) and under $100. It comes with onboard audio, 3 DIMMs, 5 PCI slots.

~THT