Very Computer

by **root** » Sat, 20 Nov 1999 04:00:00

If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who should I
believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the reasons?

Particularly, is there any reason why the Celerons might work but not
work as well as a Pentium? Is there anything about the SMP support in
the chipset instructions that makes Celerons less effective?

(I hate the way you cannot understand these things from the
documentation, because Intel won't say why it won't work, and ABIT won't
say why it will work.)

I assume there is no SMP version of the Celeron....

Two 500Mhz Celerons going into an ABIT BP6 motherboard.

The system is intended for Linux kernel SMP testing.

Please email me directly if you can.

Hans

--
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by **Rolf Magnu** » Sat, 20 Nov 1999 04:00:00

root wrote ...

Quote:>If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who should I
>believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the reasons?

Intel wants to sell expensive PII and PIII processors for the smp systems.
They want them to have an advantage over Celeron CPUs, so they claim that
they are not usable for SMP. But the mainboard manufacturers created Slot-1
adaptors to use Celerons on Slot-1 boards. Well, and they work perfectly
with SMP, so the manufacturers directly created Celeron SMP boards.

Quote:>Particularly, is there any reason why the Celerons might work but not
>work as well as a Pentium? Is there anything about the SMP support in
>the chipset instructions that makes Celerons less effective?

Nothing I know of. But I have a dual PII system, so I can't tell.

Quote:>(I hate the way you cannot understand these things from the
>documentation, because Intel won't say why it won't work, and ABIT won't
>say why it will work.)

It will. I even heared reports from people saying that it's possible to run
a PII and a Celeron CPU together in SMP mode. Unfortunately, you either have
to overclock the Celeron or underclock the PII for this. It even seems to be
possible to have 2 CPUs running with different clock mltipliers (At least in
Slot-1 boards)

Quote:>I assume there is no SMP version of the Celeron....

I don't think so.

Quote:>Two 500Mhz Celerons going into an ABIT BP6 motherboard.

Should be just fine.

Quote:>The system is intended for Linux kernel SMP testing.

--
Rolf Magnus

by **Serge Zlot** » Sun, 21 Nov 1999 04:00:00

> If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who should I
> believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the reasons?

I am writing this email with linux 2.2.13-smp & dual celeron Abit BP6...seems
to work reliably for me!

Quote:> Particularly, is there any reason why the Celerons might work but not
> work as well as a Pentium? Is there anything about the SMP support in
> the chipset instructions that makes Celerons less effective?

The only difference is in the cache: celerons get less cache (128k) but the
cache runs at the cpu core speed. I believe the difference in speed is
minimal and the ratio performance/price is much higher.

Quote:> (I hate the way you cannot understand these things from the
> documentation, because Intel won't say why it won't work, and ABIT won't
> say why it will work.)

Well Intel makes no garantee that it will work. It is not their interest.
From their point of view they should disable the smp capability of the
celeron. Of course we may have a different opinion ;-)

Quote:> I assume there is no SMP version of the Celeron....

Remember : it is not supposed to be SMP anyway, and is intended for low end
PCs.

Quote:> Two 500Mhz Celerons going into an ABIT BP6 motherboard.
> The system is intended for Linux kernel SMP testing.

Works just great, 24x7.

by **Kenneth Crud** » Tue, 23 Nov 1999 04:00:00

Quote:>If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who should I
>believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the reasons?

Intel wants people to spend the extra money and get dual P-IIs or P-IIIs.

That's the *only* reason.

-Kenny, SMP Celeron on ABit BP-6

--
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Home1: 8051 Newell St. #914 Silver Spring, MD 20910-0914 (301) 562-1922
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by **Rowan Hughe** » Wed, 24 Nov 1999 04:00:00

:> If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who should I
:> believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the reasons?
[snip}
: Remember : it is not supposed to be SMP anyway, and is intended for low end
: PCs.

The celeron was released to get back the market share stolen by the K6
and less so by Cyrix. Now that AMD has gone to the high end of the market
Intel may not put too much more development into the celeron.

--
=======================================================
Dr Rowan Hughes hughesrATdnrDOTqldDOTgovDOTau
Qld Dept Natural Resources Forestry Bldg, 4.06
CIS group, Indooroopilly. W:07-38969705 H:07-38768083

by **David** » Wed, 24 Nov 1999 04:00:00

> If the motherboard claims to be able to handle dual celerons, who
> should I believe, Intel or the motherboard maker, and what are the
> reasons?

The Celeron has the same CPU core as a P2. (With the different cache,
of course.)

The SMP circuitry is there, but Intel changed one or two wires to
prevent that circuitry from working.

Some time last year, people discovered a way to reconnect those wires.
At first, this was done by physically modifying the Celeron circuit
boards. Today, it's usually done by slightly modifying the pinouts of
the CPU connector on the motherboard.

Intel won't support that configuration, and it will void your warrantee,
but it should work. (I'd make sure you buy both motherboard and CPUs
from the same dealer and let them install and test everything - you
don't want to accidentally get a bad CPU and have to fight over the
warrantee.)

Quote:> Particularly, is there any reason why the Celerons might work but not
> work as well as a Pentium? Is there anything about the SMP support in
> the chipset instructions that makes Celerons less effective?

Same SMP circuitry as a P2. The smaller cache (128K vs. 512K) might
impact performance more in a dual-CPU configuration than in a single-CPU
configuration, but plenty of people have not noticed any such problems.

Quote:> (I hate the way you cannot understand these things from the
> documentation, because Intel won't say why it won't work, and ABIT
> won't say why it will work.)

Intel won't say why because they deliberately modified the circuit board
in an attempt to disable the feature. They couldn't just delete the
feature, because that would require extensive modification to the CPU
core.

Quote:> I assume there is no SMP version of the Celeron....

Correct. There is only one. It will run dual-processor if you get a
motherboard that supports it, or if you modify your Celeron circuit
boards. I recommend not modifying the circuit board.

Quote:> Two 500Mhz Celerons going into an ABIT BP6 motherboard.

I'm unfamiliar with this motherboard. If it explicitly says it supports
dual Celeron, then go for it.

-- David

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