We (SystemLogic.net staff) are trying to see if VIA will supply us with a motherboard for testing, but I'm not at all suprised about the poor performance. Though I don't have the performance characteristics of the DDR version at hand, I'm working on an article discussing the P4's performance, with relation to bandwidth in particular I think you'll like that one.

As for MP in the P4....regardless of the type of on-chip multithreading (with think it to be SMT, only few believe in the possiblity of CMP), I think that the P4's multiprocessing is "nicer" than the Athlon4's, at least at a low level. The reason is due to the P4's use of a write-through L1 cache, so that you only have to snoop the L2 cache, and not worry about the L1, because the most up-to-date stuff is already in the L2 (this would be perfect for CMP, and was my reason for believing Jackson tech being as such).

Because the Athlon uses an exclusive design, SMP support requires the snooping of both the L1 and L2, so the requirements are more complex. I can't go much beyond that, because I haven't looked at it enough yet.

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos