AMD's 760MPX Chipset - Multiprocessor for the Masses

CPUs and testing them

Although AMD did manufacture a batch of Athlons with a 1MB L2 cache, the product based on what was then known as the Mustang core never made it to market. The current Athlon MPs that are officially validated for dual processor operation are actually no different than their Athlon XP desktop counterparts.

There is one small exception to that statement and that is in regards to the L1 bridges on the most recent CPUs that implement the new organic packaging. As we pointed out in our Athlon XP 1900+ article, the L1 bridges on desktop CPUs are actually cut from the factory while MP CPUs aren't cut, the bridges simply aren't connected.

The only answer we could get from AMD was that the feature the L1 bridges control (multiplier) is not supported by MP motherboards. This could mean that no 760MPX motherboards will be allowed to have multiplier adjustment, or it could mean no more than AMD won't approve of multiplier support on 760MPX motherboards. Only time will tell.

Currently, Athlon MPs are being released on a staggered schedule in comparison to their desktop counterparts. The XP 1900+ was released on November 5, 2001 and the MP 1900+ followed on December 12, just about a month later.

The performance of the 760MPX chipset is no different than the 760MP chipset in the vast majority of the benchmarks we run but it was worth benchmarking to show the improvement dual Athlon MP 1900+ CPUs can have over the previous 1.2GHz kings. We have already shown the dominance of the Athlon MP 1.2GHz processors in our database server tests as well as 3D rendering and other applications so we'll try and limit the performance analysis here to areas which we haven't covered in such great detail.

Unfortunately we're still limited to testing with 1.7GHz Xeons as the only other processor released by Intel are the 2GHz CPUs which we weren't in possession of during the time of testing. We will however provide guidance as to how a pair of 2GHz Xeons would stack up where appropriate.

Since we've already examined the performance difference between single and dual processors you can consult our original article for a look at those performance numbers. This review will just briefly focus on the improvement the MP 1900+ offers over the MP 1.2GHz and compare both of those to the 1.7GHz Xeons.

The Test