Can the MP being upgraded with this

No. Different board, different socket.

 

That would be a downgrade, technically. 6 cores < 4 cores with HT (8 threads)

 

Impossible.

 

Yeah, not possible... but also wouldn't be necessarily be a downgrade in terms of cores.

6 full cores vs. 4 cores + 4 hyperthreaded, I'll take 6 cores.

I don't know how much more improved hyperthreading is in the newer cpu's but in the old p4 days, a P4 with hyperthreading vs a dual core P4, the dual core would of course win every day. Hyperthreading, depending on the application, was advertised to get you up to 30% improvement. Another core gets you 100%.

It is a downgrade in terms of everything else as the 7400 series is based on older architecture. No integrated memory controller, no quickpath, no sse4.2, etc.

 

Me too! The virtual cores only add about 20% and not 100% like an actual core.

So 6 is greater than 8 in this case!