XP Home Edition and Dual CPU/Hyperthreading

[Elie]

Hi guys,

Anyone here running XP Home on a dual CPU or hyperthreading PC?

How would you rate the performance in general compared to XP Pro?

Thanks in advance,
Elie

[Admiral]

I think Home does SMT (better than 2k) but doesn't do SMP.

[Wombat]

Home explicitly says it doesn't run more than one CPU. HT, maybe, I'm not sure.

[Gurm]

There has to be some trickery needed to make HT work, I can imagine it would be a PR disaster for Microsoft otherwise.

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Yeah, but it might only be on later builds of Home that shipped with a HT box or something.

[Gurm]

Now that you mention it, I think maybe one of the enhancements in SP1 was to detect if you were using a HT cpu and to turn on the SMP support for it.

- Gurm

[Marshmallowman]

I thought home does HT but Not SMT

It would cause quite a nasty situation between MS and intel if MS crippled the top of the line CPU.

[MultimediaMan]

Marshmallowman is right, and so is Gurm.
HT is correctly implemented in WinXP Home SP1a. True SMP is not available for XP Home

[Elie]

Hey thanks guys for the detailed info!!!!

didn't realize that Home did not support true SMP, what was Microsoft thinking??????

Regards,
Elie

[Jon P. Inghram]

Originally posted by Elie
Hey thanks guys for the detailed info!!!!

didn't realize that Home did not support true SMP, what was Microsoft thinking??????

Regards,
Elie

That the average home user wouldn't even have a clue what SMP was or why they'd want it, and that if you knew what it was and wanted it you'd be willing to pay extra for WinXP Pro.

[Gurm]

You have to remember that the extra $$ you shell out for professional is NOT merely for the couple extra networking options and the SMP support - it's for extra support from MS.

They didn't want Johnny home user calling them up and trying to get help troubleshooting SMP, which can be quirky even at the best of times.

- Gurm