dual t-birds? possible effective?

[piffdog]

Howdy folks, I had a question for all you smart ones out there, I have the chance to get ahold of a couple athlon 850mhz processors for free and I was wondering if I would be able to run them in a dual processor config or not ould this be possible and if so what mobo would you guys recommend I buy.
Thanks!
-piffer

 

[CrackedSKull]

i really doubt it, those aren't even t-birds, they didn't start making those until 1ghz. Even if they did work, I think most dual boards are $200+ , so you'd probably be better off just buying a single hundred dollar motherboard and a new cpu.

Remember even athlon mp's usually don't offer more than %20 speed over a single proccessor, in most cases less than %10.

 

[Angry]

Actualy ALL Socket A Athlons are tbirds....
they even made 700mhz ones....
The only difference would be that all 950 and below Tbirds had Aluminum interconnects but 1ghz and up have copper. Obvously the copper ones overclocker better..

 

[David]

Thunderbird-Bs are available at:
700, 750, 800, 850, 900, 950, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400(I think).

As long as the CPUs are SOCKET A CPUs - ie flat then all you need is a dual CPU mobo. Beware - they are expensive but dual CPUs gives you great bragging rights

 

[FRANK]

Actualy ALL Socket A Athlons are tbirds....
they even made 700mhz ones....
The only difference would be that all 950 and below Tbirds had Aluminum interconnects but 1ghz and up have copper. Obvously the copper ones overclocker better..

You are correct all socket A Athlons are T-BIRDS and some of the later slot A's were as well. I have a socket A 650 T-BIRD probably intended for the OEM market, it is a week 22 year 2000 AFEA core that never could do much better than 850MHz.

It has been generally accepted that the T-BIRDS fabricated in Dresden Germany used copper interconnects and were better candidates for overclocking, while the early Austin Texas chips used aluminum. It is further believed that an easy way to determine where the CPU was fabricated was to look at the dye used on the core. Most accept that the Dresden chips were the "BLUE" cores while the Austin chips used green. Most report that all DURONS were "GREEN" cores with aluminum interconnects.

This is a moot point now since I believe that all of the later CPU's use copper.

Back to the original question.

Provided the 850's are socket A, not slot A, they should work, there are no slot A dual proccessor motherboards.
Although not "officially" supported, the T-BIRD/DURONs will supposedly work in a dual proccessor board albeit without the SSE and additional instrucitons of the XPs.

As far as motherboard choice, you are limited as to what's available, a couple from TYAN, one from ASUS and maybe a few others. I just put a TYAN S2460 together and can tell you that the performance options on this board are quite limited. I will try SoftFSB or some such program but expect no/limited help from TYAN in this regard. I understand that the ASUS board is better in the overclocking options available. Expect the upper tier TYAN and ASUS boards to start in the mid $200 range and go up from there, The TYAN S2460 is readily available for less than $200. If you're brave and looking to save a few bucks, a "refurbished" TYAN S2460 is available from New Egg for $129. I got one and it included nothing but the motherboard, no manual, cables, software etc.

For an on-going comparison of two particular MP boards, check out his thread;

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=71811

I hope this helps.

Good Luck!

 

[piffdog]

Thanks for all your help guys, I think I'll try out the dual t-bird setup and ..yes the are socket procs not slot procs, anyway thanks again
-piffer

 

[FRANK]

No problem.

You may also want to check out the forum over at 2CPU.com as well as the TYAN section of the forum at AMDMB.COM. There's a lot of useful information that will help you through the inevitable problems and quirks as you set up your first multi-processor system.

Good Luck