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Right, here's the thing.

It costs $50 more per processor to run a dual Athlon system with Athlon MP, rather than Athlon XP processors. My question is: is it worth it? As far as I can tell, the difference is that MP processors are guaranteed to work, where as XP processors will probably work just as well. As I'm trying to squeeze as much performance out of my buck as I can right now, should I just go for XP processors and damn the consequences?

Anyone done any testing, or got any "a friend of a friend" horror stories for me?

Ta muchly.

Well, from what i hear, the mp's also are multiplier unlocked by default.
Don't know if this still is the case though

It *should* work just as well. No guarantees tho. The nice thing 'bout the MP's, like K-Wulf mentioned is that they are still multiplier unlocked. This can be a huge advantage if you wanna do a faster FSB while still keeping the processor the same clock speed (increase FSB, drop multiplier).

One thing to keep in mind. If you do get an Athlon MP for its unlocked multiplier, make sure your board actually supports mucking with the front side bus. With a lot of the dually boards being workstation/server models, the ability to overclock the front side bus isn't guaranteed.