AMD server market share rolls on

What about legacy compatibility?: If you have old legacy DOS software written for the 386 or even older CPUs, you may want to stick with Intel for maximum compatibility and to avoid any potential “gotchas,” right?

Wrong. There is at least one rather large class of legacy x86 software that worked fine on older Intel CPUs (up through the Pentium 166MHz or so), but not on any newer Intel CPUs. Without a patch, any program compiled with Borland Turbo Pascal 5.5 (the most popular compiler of its day) will crash on a newer Intel CPU with a “Division By Zero” error.

And yet, they work just fine on AMD CPUs (at least several generations later than the Intel versions — I admit that I haven’t tried it with the latest chips), patch or no patch!; Posted by: Joel R Posted on: 04/26/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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30% within reach bidemytime | 04/26/06

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