Quote:
Originally Posted by Favu  Well, I made a treck through Microsofts knowledge base and found this document = http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...read_brief.doc
Essentially, what I think it is saying (it is rather confusing to read) is that XP Home will work on a quad core, but it won't fully utilize the four cores.
If anyone else could have a read through and see if they can make more sense of it, I would appreciate it!  |
That's not the way I read it at all. Microsoft licenses its operating systems 'per socket' not per core. As a result, XP Home will work just fine with a quad-core
cpu, PROVIDED that the
CPU is a true quad-core, and not a pair of dual-cores plugged into an MCM (which XP sees as two separate dual-core cpus). If you plug, e.g. a Kentsfield into your XP Home system, only one of the CPUs and two of the cores will be recognized, because it is made by gluing two CPUs onto one MCM, and Windows has no way to detect this. However, if you plug e.g. a Penryn in, all four cores will be recognized, because they are all on one
CPU.
At least, that is my understanding.