I came across a deal on a Dell 670 workstation and bought it for my
photoshop needs. It currenlty has only one processor xeon 3.4, but i
would like to add a second 3.4 but I don't know if they are all the
same or are there different models? If there are different models, do
the processors have to be the exact same model or will any xeon 3.4
work? I found one that stated it was 'passive'?? Any help is greatly
appeciated!
There are a few different versions of the Xeon, though none of them
are "passive" (or "active" for that matter!). For the 3.4GHz model
there are two main versions, one with 1MB of L2 cache and one with 2MB
of L2 cache. You will almost certainly want to match the cache of the
two chips.
In addition to that there are 2 separate steppings of the 1MB model
(only 1 stepping for the 2MB model), though either the D0 or E0
stepping should work just fine. Finally, if you want to get really
anal about things and be 100% positive that your chips are matched,
you can check the sSpec of your chip. There are 6 sSpecs for the
3.4GHz Xeon, 2 for each stepping. However there's really not much
reason to worry about one sSpec vs. another for the same stepping as
the chips themselves are identical, the different sSpecs have more to
do with distribution in this case.
Really though, all you need to worry about is that you've got the same
cache size of 3.4GHz P4. To quote directly from Intel's specs on this
matter:
"Intel only supports and validates dual processor configurations in
which both Intel® Xeon™ processor with 800 MHz system bus operate with
the same front side bus frequency, core frequency, and have the same
internal cache sizes."
This info is from Page 21 of Intel's datasheets for the Xeon with
800MHz bus speed:
ftp://download.intel.com/design/Xeon/datashts/30235501.pdf
