MSI K7D - I've got the Power(Now)! [Home]
Current BIOS patch revision: 0.09
What's all this about?
There are several dual socket-A board out there that support mobile CPUs running
in SMP mode without modification. The K7D is not one of them, unfortunately. The
chipset support is there, the board support is there, but the BIOS gets in the
way. So, the solution is to fix the BIOS and get rid of this annoying
restriction.
Why bother? Well, two reasons. The first is the 1337-ness (sorry) of being able
to change multipliers on the fly, in a dual-CPU system, from within your OS of
choice. AMD has never, and still doesn't, produce chips that are supposed to be
able to do SMP and software multiplier changes (Opterons can't do Cool'n'Quiet).
The second reason is more practical. Newer Athlon XP's have die-locked
multipliers and run on FSBs of 166MHz or higher. Using these in a MPX system is
a huge waste, as the FSB can usually only get into the 140 to 150MHz range, and
you can't adjust the multiplier to compensate. By enabling PowerNow (and doing
a few small bridge modifications), the normal speed (and then some :) ) of
these chips can be used.
Currently the patch seems to be stable and not eating BIOSes in its basic form.
The BIOSes with more advanced features (like keyboard undo and SBU) are still
not functioning 100% correctly, though they are not eating BIOS chips either.
For full details see the status page.