I would bet that your running into problems because of the differences in cpu's
before going out and buying another cpu I would try compiling an smp kernel on
your machine. I'm not sure how your doing it but it sounds as though your using
precompiled kernels. If you do not know how to compile a kernel go to
www.maximumlinux.com. they have a very good walkthrough of compiling a kernel
in there howto archives. I'm not sure that this will fix your problem but I've
had many experiences where a device would not work until I used a kernel that
was compiled on the machine that the device was on.
Sam.