Processor Upgrade Question.

[madmatt]

I currently have a Pentium D 840 and I want to upgrade to a Pentium D 950. According to my research this new processor will work without a problem in my current motherboard.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentium_D/index.htm

Is there any thing I should know and/or do before I upgrade?

Since coming back OSNN I'm upgrade happy all of a sudden.

Thank you.

 

[kcnychief]

I currently have a Pentium D 840 and I want to upgrade to a Pentium D 950. According to my research this new processor will work without a problem in my current motherboard.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentium_D/index.htm

Is there any thing I should know and/or do before I upgrade?

Since coming back OSNN I'm upgrade happy all of a sudden.

Thank you.

Yeah, OSNN has that affect on people in regards to upgrade-happy-itis

By and large, you shouldn't have a problem since they are both LGA775. However, since you don't have a "True" Intel Mobo, since it's a DELL OEM board, anything can happen. I would say you are 99.9% safe, but that's my opinion. What may be your best plan of action, is to call Dell and ask them direct, just as a hypothetical. Be like "if I want to upgrade my CPU, will I run into problems?". This way you can get input, and not have to buy from them as you can get the chip cheaper elsewhere.

Or, ask Sazar

Personally, and I know others will disagree, I would also recommend re-installing Windows after a huge upgrade like that.

Good luck with the anticipated upgrade

 

[celticfan11]

Personally, and I know others will disagree, I would also recommend re-installing Windows after a huge upgrade like that.

I am a disagreer (if thats a word). All you are doing is changing to a faster CPU. Which is similar to overclocking your pc as far as windows goes. So I wouldnt reinstall Windows. Unless i am wrong and can be corrected by another fellow OSNNer

 

[Steevo]

I overclock all the time. I say go for it!!!!

 

[kcnychief]

I am a disagreer (if thats a word). All you are doing is changing to a faster CPU. Which is similar to overclocking your pc as far as windows goes. So I wouldnt reinstall Windows. Unless i am wrong and can be corrected by another fellow OSNNer

It wasn't really a suggestion out of functionality, but the CPU is a major change. I would at least re-run an ACPI Multi-Processor driver installation, just to ensure everything gets detected smoothly.

 

[ELopes580]

It wasn't really a suggestion out of functionality, but the CPU is a major change. I would at least re-run an ACPI Multi-Processor driver installation, just to ensure everything gets detected smoothly.

Major change??? WTF are you talking about??? and rerun ACPI?? Do you have ANY idea what you are talking about????

 

[Mastershakes]

Major change??? WTF are you talking about??? and rerun ACPI?? Do you have ANY idea what you are talking about????

hehehe. I like this guy already. Welcome to OSNN.

Change processor. That's it.

 

[ElementalDragon]

i'd also kinda have to agree on the reinstalling windows bit. granted it's basically like OC'ing, which doesn't require a re-install...... but it IS changing to a completely different processor.... which, well.... ISN'T like overclocking. Then again....... this is coming from the person who often performs a bi-weekly format, so........ yeah.

 

[Sazar]

Check with tech support to see if they can extend your warranty to cover the new proc. You have a decent set of items in there, make sure it will be covered.

Fwiw, I am not sure if the upgrade is necessary tbh but it's your rig

Performance difference for most things will be intangible, barely perceptible.

 

[kcnychief]

Major change??? WTF are you talking about??? and rerun ACPI?? Do you have ANY idea what you are talking about????

Ah Edgar, how I have missed our lovely conversations

I am a creature of habit, like to have everything very tight in a row. If you read my post carefully enough, you will see it was only a suggestion. After the OS is installed, for a change of the CPU I would recommend re-running the ACPI Multiprocessor Driver installation to ensure the CPU is detected properly with all of its bells and whistles. I repeat, not required, but something I would do.

Doesn't mean I am right, doesn't mean someone else is wrong, it is just something that I would do. :lick:

How is STCC treatin ya?

 

[ELopes580]

Then tell me this Derek, do you also format and reinstall Windows when you upgrade the RAM as well???

What is your logical reason for your "suggestion", which you have yet to explain?

The OS, for the most part, does not care about what the cpu is. If you know anything, the 840 and the 950 are the exact same thing other than an updated core on the 9xx series and are both dualcore.

Just because you do something of habit doesn't make it right. Not everyone has time to format and reinstall everything for no reason.

You remind me of good ol' Bagdadd Bob, Iraq's former Minister of MisInformation.

Bought anymore Alienwares lately?

 

[madmatt]

lol.

Saz is right. It wouldn't do much for me at this point. And judging by the price it's not going to happen.

I have to pay off my new video card first, that Saz still hasn't hooked up an earlier ship date.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

LMAO reinstall windows cause of a CPU yeah ok I remember back in windows 98 days changing every single piece of hardware and not reinstalling windows98 , went from intel 166 to an AMD 400 everything was different , I just cleaned out device manager and loaded drivers was good for over 1 1/2 years before I reinstalled windows.

 

[Sazar]

lol.

Saz is right. It wouldn't do much for me at this point. And judging by the price it's not going to happen.

I have to pay off my new video card first, that Saz still hasn't hooked up an earlier ship date.

PM me the ****ing order number n00b lol.

I'll look it up for you first thing tomorrow.

All I know is Dell has none currently in stock.

 

[Son Goku]

It wasn't really a suggestion out of functionality, but the CPU is a major change. I would at least re-run an ACPI Multi-Processor driver installation, just to ensure everything gets detected smoothly.

Going to a higher clocked CPU on the same mobo, is no big change, and I wouldn't recommend reinstalling the OS for this in the main...

As to what Sazar has indicated/run into, this isn't quite the same thing. Sazar went from a uni-core A-64 to an X2, which uses dual cores. Rather then simply going to a higher clocked CPU, this is going from a uni-proc (where winNT/2k/XP uses a uni-processor hardware abstraction layer), to a dual proc setup, where a different HAL is used. If one were to run winNT or 2k, which still shows the text mode part of the boot, one would see

.....
uniprocessor free

on the bluescreen part of boot, or reference to multi-processor. This is because the installer loads a different HAL, depending on whether one has 1 CPU or more then 1. An X2, is seen by the OS as 2 CPUs, and hence needs the multi-proc HAL... That's why he saw what he did.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=309283

Windows XP Device Manager and Windows Server 2003 Device Manager list limited choices for changing your HAL type when you click Update Driver. Unsupported options are not available. Microsoft Windows 2000 Device Manager lets you select any HAL type. If you select an incorrect HAL, you may not be able to start Windows 2000, or you may have other issues.

When you install the following HALs on a Windows XP-based or Windows Server 2003-based computer, the following device manager HAL options appear:

Latter on, they go to mention different hardware abstraction layers present, with different entries for uni-processor, and multi-processor... This is something I had noticed back in NT 4 days, as unlike winXP, this part of boot wasn't eliminated, in favor of a GUI image only... It is good to understand why, one can have this issue.

If one were to go from one uni-proc to another uni-proc of a different clock, this would not be an issue. If one were to go from an X2 4200+ to an X2 4600+ this would not be an issue, as one would have the correct HAL (be it uni-proc or multi-proc) already installed.

 

[Son Goku]

Well matt, if it isn't in stock, there's not much he can do...

That said, I did have a bit of a thought, and not sure how this works at Dell. Given saz's previous indication that they don't necessarily hold a lot of stock in warehouses and what not for the various parts; how do they handle big orders where time is an issue. Say a fortune 500 company calls up, and:

OK, I need 20,000 computers. Our branch office at x location needs 10,000 boxes, shipped to arive by next Tuesday. I need them by then, to get to installing these boxes on the premisis to meet x deadline. Location y needs only 7,000 of x model PC, but we need it by this Friday...(OK lets say the call was made on Monday, so 5 days from order to arival.) It's vital I have them by then, as I've got this weekend, to install them to this or that dept, bosses want it up and running by next Monday. The remaining 3,000 PCs don't have to be to location 3 until Friday. Can you do this?

Well, if they have to order all the parts, are they situated to recieve stuff in the mail, build it, and ship it out on such short notice. Course, one needing a rush is probably going for a next day air delivery option, which cuts it down to 4 days to have it filled, built, and shipped... On the other hand, given the cost of a given computer, with 20,000 PCs, one wouldn't want to lightely turn down a say 20,000 * $2,000 = $40 million order, if one can possibly fill such an order. And that's excluding any possible extended warranties. That would be a lot of money to lose, if that same customer ended up having to go elsewhere, in order to to meet their own companies deadlines...

 

[kcnychief]

Geez, tough crowd

First off, in regards to time, it isn't a factor for me as I have my own custom-built image. This downloads in roughly 15-20 minutes, I have no data restoration as all my stuff is on a NAS, not a big deal.

I never said things I do make them right, and if you again read my OP, it stated others would disagree. I like to tinker with my PC a lot, if I want to re-install Windows because I want to do it, I can. However for the most part now I have a machine I beat on regularly to avoid downtime on my main PC.

I don't re-image if I upgrade the RAM, but there was a time that I blew some dust out of the case, and after that I did re-image

Nope, no Alienwares lately. That machine was CRAZY expensive, and I wasn't even all that impressed with it. It ran hot, and was slower than other machines I have built. But, then again, you know better than most that I used to go through computers almost monthly

Anyways, welcome to OSNN Edgar. I hope you stick around, it's a great site.

 

[Son Goku]

Not all people have your image, and also the time to re-image is still time vs. none at all One of course can do as they please on their own box But as for recommendations for others, I definitely would not advise reinstalling the box for a simple CPU upgrade, as something one should do, in most cases. There can be a difference between what one individual might like doing, and what another individual would need to do...

What happened in Sazar's case shouldn't be seen as what will happen in all cases, as there is a definite reason Saz ran into this. His upgrade from A64 to X2 requires a different HAL, and the probs he noticed were because his older hardware abstraction layer (uni-proc) wasn't appropriate for his newer dual core CPU. Microsoft themselves indicates that chosing the wrong HAL can bring with it either a failure to boot, or certain issues... That doesn't mean all CPU upgrades will need a different HAL however

 

[kcnychief]

Yeah, I agree, HAL issues are not very common.

As a side note, don't ever listen to me, I have issues

 

[Son Goku]

Fair enough

BTW, for the benefit of anyone new to forum who might run into this, I'll site a little on why the HAL is being brought up. I looked at the win2k Resource Kit (sorry, don't have the XP one) and it seemed to have nothing on the system architecture in the book I have there in the closet. The NT 4 resource kit has some info, but less in this particular area. So here goes:

The HAL is a loadable kernel-mode module (HALL.DLL) that provides the low-level interface to the hardware platform on which Windows NT is running. It hides hardware-dependent details such as I/O interfaces, interrupt controllers, and multiprocessor communication mechanisms--any functions that are architecture-specific and machine-dependent.

So rather than access hardware directly, Windows NT internal components as well as user-written device drivers maintain portability by calling the HAL routines when they need platform-dependent information.

...Although there are many HALs on the Windows NT distribution media (look for HAL*.DLL), only one is chosen at installation time and copied to the system disk with the finelane HAL.DLL. (Other operating systems, such as VMS, select the equivalent of the HAL at system boot time.)...

(Inside Windows NT: 63) The only other place where multi-proc setups is mentioned, is wrt the micro-kernel, or in this book they just call it the kernel, as distinct from the whole system executive.

The kernel performs the most fundamental operations in Windows NT, determining how the operating system uses the processor or processors and ensuring that they are used prudently. It is the lowest layer in NTOSKRNL.EXE.

These are the primary functions the kernel (other sources call it the micro-kernel) provides:

* Thread scheduling and dispatching
* Trap handling and exception dispatching
* Interrupt handling and dispatching
* Multiprocessor synchronization
* Providing the kernel objects that are used (and in some cases exported to user mode) by the executive

...The kernel always runs in kernel mode and is designed to be small, compact, and as portable as performance and differences in processor architecture allow. For example, it does not pobe accessibility of parameters, since it assumes that its callrs know what they are doing. The kernel code is written primarily in C, with assembly code reserved for those tasks that require the fastest possible code or that really heavily on the capabilities of the processor.

(Same book: 60-61)

Course the whole system XP was designed off of, was originally designed to run on Alphas and MIPP processors in addition to x86. Also a reason, the port to x86-64 and Itanium didn't prove so problematic... Also, though not mentioned here, as I remember the HAL is the part of the system which is written in assembly language, rather then in C... Beyond these 2 changes, the whole rest of the operating system sitting on top of it will be the same (well except where different device drivers are used). In the case of x86, I don't think 2 seperate ntoskrn.exe files are used, which leaves the HAL as the file which will very...

Hopefully, if anyone reads this thread, who is uncertain what we're mentioning here, this mention to the OS architecture will help clarify...