look for a data sheet and check if the pinouts are the same, I doubt that they are but the T may just be a silicon revision.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-07-16, 20:44:

look for a data sheet and check if the pinouts are the same, I doubt that they are but the T may just be a silicon revision.

MCP2 and MCP2-T are different variants of nforce2 southbridge, definitely not just different revisions. MCP2 is the most basic one, MCP2-T includes a few extra features. Most notably - SoundStorm, a couple of FireWire ports and extra LAN.

I am not sure how compatible they are and how realistic it would be to make different one work, but i'd definitely not just solder a different one and hope it works.

Archer57 wrote on 2025-07-17, 02:21:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-07-16, 20:44:

look for a data sheet and check if the pinouts are the same, I doubt that they are but the T may just be a silicon revision.

MCP2 and MCP2-T are different variants of nforce2 southbridge, definitely not just different revisions. MCP2 is the most basic one, MCP2-T includes a few extra features. Most notably - SoundStorm, a couple of FireWire ports and extra LAN.

I am not sure how compatible they are and how realistic it would be to make different one work, but i'd definitely not just solder a different one and hope it works.

Didn't know how differentthey were, like you I wouldn't just go solering without doing research first

They're likely as similar as the bx and zx chipsets.

Ie, the same, but with bits disabled, and many "NC" (no connect) pins.

At face value, you might think great.
But all of those NC pins that you want to use on the better one need to be connected on the board in question.

Ie, even though the zx and bx are identical internally,and the pinouts are the same ex NCs you can't just drop a bx chip on a zx board and gain features the board never supported.

I would say they are pin compatible, if you look at Asus A7N8X and A7N8X-X, same pcb different southbridge, same as MSI K7N2 Delta-L and K7N2 Delta-ILSR.

myne wrote on 2025-07-17, 05:13:

They're likely as similar as the bx and zx chipsets. […]
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They're likely as similar as the bx and zx chipsets.

Ie, the same, but with bits disabled, and many "NC" (no connect) pins.

At face value, you might think great.
But all of those NC pins that you want to use on the better one need to be connected on the board in question.

Ie, even though the zx and bx are identical internally,and the pinouts are the same ex NCs you can't just drop a bx chip on a zx board and gain features the board never supported.

I don't think he gives a damn about the extra features, just wants a working board.

The question is will letting the extra pins float and treating the IC as a direct replacement for its predecessor work?

I completely forgot that I wrote this post 😀
The chip was purchased. Sometimes I send things in for repair, telling the technician what needs to be done, hoping it will work, and just out of curiosity, whether the diagnosis I'm making is accurate. So far, it always has been. 😀
Here the first question is whether the pinout of the MCP and MCP-T is the same (which would mean that the MCP should have unused pins in places where the MCP-T has functional ones). Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single datasheet with the pinout
The second problem is that it is possible that the BIOS will not recognize the MCP-T

If you know of 2 Asus boards, one with each, I can look through my converted boardviews and you can compare the pinouts

dulu wrote on 2025-07-16, 20:12:

As the title says. When I bought the chip, I didn't notice that there were different versions.

According to this article https://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/34/4, both MCP and MCP-T chips are pin compatible.

Here's the A7n8x-x and a7n8x-L

Use kicad or boardview to compare