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Introducing - Unofficial Windows XP SP4


harkaz

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Dang it. I have a tendency to sympathise with the underdog and that's why I have been using AMD's - but from an egoisic pow I probably should have gone wtih Intel; all the more so because I've never been into gaming. Be that as it may, anyway I don't run any cpu intensive applications.

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On 8. 4. 2016 at 3:05 AM, FranceBB said:

... Intel, then, had the brilliant idea of making a CPU that has two smaller cores instead of a single powerful one. The power of these two cores, together, is greater than a single powerful one, the problem, at the time, was that programs had to be made/optimised to run using the multithread, otherwise just one core would have been used...

Your version of the story is quite misguiding. You probably see the history via AMD fan angle of view. I, as an intel user, would see it a bit differently. I'm not blind to adore intel beyond the limits. I appreciate AMD's success and inovations they made in the past. The biggest one was integrating the MCH into the CPU that dramatically improved memory bandwidth. Intel was some way suspicios about that but finally they adopted in new core Nehalem generation... But I wanted to clarify and complete the information that after successfull Pentium III intel was developing new microarchitecture called Netburst - Pentium 4 generation that trurned out to be not much successfull. They was forced to gain power with high frequency that caused overheating issues. In that ages AMD ruled, that's true. But the card had flipped when intel decided, finally, to trash Netburst and continue with P3 evolution (P3 in fact never ended but was still developed by some small Israel team who created Pentium M and then Core solo and core duo - this was aimed to notebooks - intel Centrino not desktops/server) and they came with new Core 2 duo that was, IMHO, the most successful intel CPU that brought very significant performance gain with limited power consumption. It's not true they made 2 small weak cores. They are full featured cores that can share large L2 cache. Every benchmark or real test show you, that even on single core the C2D performed better than P4 at much higher frequency. That was due to improved microarchitecture and cache not because of 65nm technology (also P4 was manufactured by 65nm process but it didn't help them much). So intel quickly overrun AMD and then continued with also very successful core i7 Nehalem and Sandybridge. AMD response was making 6 or 8 cores CPUs but they have currently worse perf. per core and still in 2016 there are lot of singlethread apps that matters. Simple because some algorithms cannot be divided and paralelized.

BTW I'm not happy that intel has no a real competitor now, their evolution slow down a lot (new core generation can brings say 0-5% gain in common apps) and prices stays high... BTW this was a reason why I decided to upgrade to 4 years old Sandybridge 2600K instead of latest Skylake CPU, it gives me similar performance but for ~1/3 of price...

Edited by xrayer
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@roffen - Post#14 (as I said) -

it is in fact for all AMD multi core processors (at least up to the x4's) according to AMD's site.

Whether that's true or not... :unsure: You did read that post, right? :huh: Can we "assume" that the problem was "fixed" with later processors? I don't have an XP on my Dell AMD Dual-Core (x64) ATM, so I can't confirm any of this, but I'm pretty sure that Dell inserted that "fix" into the XP MCE 2005 install (before I "broke" my E521's). I don't remember that BOOT.INI being present, though.

Side note: I now have a Dell Inspiron 531 (almost the same, just "upgraded" hardware). Can't remember if it will take a Quad (which I don't have), so...

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IMPORTANT: There is an issue with post-sp4 .NET FW 4.0 updates I would like to report, which is not caused by the SP4 itself.
Scenario: Install SP4 -> Enable .NET Framework 4.0-> Run Windows Update Manual Check. -> Install Updates -> reboot -> Installed all updates successfully -> Run Windows Update Manual Check.

You will get the old .NET Framework 4 GDR update (KB2468871) in the optional updates.
Reason: This happens because one of the newest updates deletes the:
HKLM, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile\KB2468871" and
HKLM, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended Profile\KB2468871"registry keys.

These keys are necessary to satisfy the WU detection algorithm for the XP product family (not the POSReady one), but they play no other significant role whatsoever; this is actually a flaw in WU detection algorithm.

SOLUTION: You can let Windows Update download and install the update automatically (it should not be removed afterwards).

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@dibya - Maybe so? I haven't run/extracted it but the Date is 8-14-2008 and SP3 is 4-14-2008. Seems MS' SP3 was way ahead of AMD by 4 months on this problem? :unsure:

Just extracted... File="amd_dc_opt.exe" dated 7-22-2008.
Registry Added= "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"

Please explain how this can be included in SP3. :crazy:

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@submix8c

Actually SP2 wrongly used NTOSKRNL where in athlon need NTKRNLPA so MS Fixed it on SP3.

What you actually mentioned above , many OEM Already added the fix in their Disc.

These are some weired problem faced by athlon user but since phenemon this problem gone.

This happened due to AMD64 Dualcore architecture was not detected by SP2 .

You mentioned why? AMD team was ahead of MS.

this is  due to fact most people runs xp sp2 that time. i am guesing

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SEEMS reasonable, however, if it was a simple matter of using Single-Core vs Dual(or more)-Core, why not use the "Flip to Multi-Core" method that is so easy to do by simply changing the BOOT.INI a single (actually twice) time? Or was that too much trouble for the average user?

Hmmm -
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/545980-optimize-xp-for-dual-core/
Some of the comments indicate it seems to be somewhat related to a setting that can be done in an Intel-based Motherboard, something having to do with Reduced Power/Clocking (Intel's C1E and SpeedStep) that the OS will do is "set". It doesn't jive with your explanation and seems pretty unclear as to its true purpose. :unsure:

Personally, I turn off all of the PowerSaving/ScreenSaver/SleepWake features in both the BIOS and the OS', including those two "I'll choke you" BIOS settings.

So the poster's problem is... what? I DO remember something about the "order" of the CPU's Core usage somewhere which is exactly what the above link indicates. Pretty sure it had SOMETHING to do with a 6-core design (which is why I won't touch one). Something to do with the L2/L3 being "shared" between the Cores (or something). BE AWARE that I'm speaking STRICTLY of the AMD 6-Core Processors, not a 2-4-8 (up) Processors, since AMD got a bit weird with that particular one. Lousy factoring to do 2*n instead of 2^n IMHO.

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I tried creating a new topic but somehow it failed. So I make it a reply instead.

I wanted to ask why I can't find anything indicating that SP 4 is installed. But this last installation I did yesterday has a Windows folder of 3.85GB, and is doing updates that I wouldn't expect from a plain SP3 installation.

Do I have an AMD problem, what should I do?

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