XP Home and dual or quad CPU's

[Pete Carr]

I have heard that XP Home Edition did not support CPU's with dual or quad
processing. Only XP Pro does etc. How much of this is true now that single
CPU's have dual or quad core's?

Is there any difference between XP Home and XP Pro in these new CPU's?
In Task manager it shows four boxes on XP home with an Intel Quad core CPU.
Does that mean XP Home IS using all four of the quad cores on the CPU?
All info welcome.
Thanks

 

[R. McCarty]

The issue with Home/Professional support of CPUs is the number of
"Physical" processors, not cores. Previously the term Multiprocessor
indicated more than a single CPU in separate packages. Today, CPUs
have multiple cores but are on a single piece of Silicon ( one chip ).
XP Home supports only a single physical CPU chip, XP Professional
can support 2. When multi-core processors appeared Microsoft did
not change it's licensing terms so the term Multiprocessor causes a bit
of confusion.

 

[Juan Perez]

Hi:

Basically Windows XP Home, support one single CPU, but this CPU may have
multiple cores, like Dual 2 Core or Core 2 Quad Processors from Intel or the
AMD 64 by AMD . Windows XP Pro may support 1 or 2 physical CPUs, also with
different cores.

I let you a link from MS for better understanding:

Multicore Processor Licensing
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/multicore.mspx

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Think "sockets".

Home can use one processor socket, XP two, and servers four and up depending
on the edition.

It does not matter what is on the processor in a socket, a socket is a
socket.

A dual-core processor appears in Task Manager as one physical processor and
two logical processors. A tri-core appears as one physical and three
logical processors. A quad-core appears as one physical and four logical
processors.

If you run Home on a dual-processor board it will use one of the processors
and the other will simply be unused. That one processor can be multi-core
and Home can use all the cores. Pro will use both processors.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have heard that XP Home Edition did not support CPU's with dual or quad
processing.

Sorry, you've heard wrong. That's not correct. It does not support
multiple physical processors.

Only XP Pro does etc. How much of this is true now that single
CPU's have dual or quad core's?

None of it. Dual core and quad core are fine and supported in both
Professional and Home.

Is there any difference between XP Home and XP Pro in these new CPU's?

No.


In Task manager it shows four boxes on XP home with an Intel Quad core CPU.
Does that mean XP Home IS using all four of the quad cores on the CPU?

Yes.