Format HD after a processor upgrade? (same motherboard)

Caxus

I currently have a 3700 san diego. If i keep the same motherboard and just swap that 3700 for a dual core chip, would i still have to do the whole format and reinstall windows thing or would everything be fine?

RWB

No. Everything will be just fine, same thing goes for memory and even graphics cards. Sometimes you can swap out the motherboard without much issue, but I would normally format anyways. But for your processor, it'll just swap out no prob.

Leonardo

I don't know about that, RWB. He may have no problems with getting all the hardware drivers installed correctly, but he may have problems with Windows seeing both CPU cores. I upgraded some systems from hyperthreaded Pentiums (core plus virtual core) to D8XX dual cores without a problem, and that was even with new motherboards. Upgrading from a pure single core to dual core may cause no problems for the system overall, but it may result in only one core working on the CPU. He may have to perform a fresh install of Windows for both CPU cores to be recognized and employed.

RWB

That's a good point I didn't notice he was going from one core to dual core haha, sorry.

SPIKE09

All should be perfectly fine, going from an AMD 3500 to the X2 3800 caused no grief whatsoever and the 2nd core was folding within 10 minutes of the change of processor.

EDIT Same MOBO and RAM as you too.

muddocktor

The only problem you might run into with this kind of upgrade is like Leo stated; the OS might not "see" the other core. But that's and easy fix also (with both Win2K Pro and WinXP). If after the upgrade you go check the performance tab in Windows Task Manager and only see one core being reported, go open System Properties and open up Device Manager. Expand the "Computer" label and check what Windows is showing the computer to be. If it doesn't show something labeled with "Multiprocessor" in the label, you will need to upgrade the driver for it from Uniprocessor HAL (hardware extraction Layer) to a Multiprocessor HAL. After going and doing this you will then reboot the system and Windows will then "see" the other core. I had to do this 1-2 times with all the upgrades I've done on running systems that I have upgraded from a single core proc to a dual core (or multiprocessor) proc.