Dual Processor

[bluephi1914]

hope this isnt a stupid question, BUT

do boards that have dual processors really out perform single board processors, or do you have to have operating system and software that will take advantage of the technology before i will actually notice a difference?

I have a pIII 450 slot 1, and was looking at buying a older asus p2b-d dual processor board and getting another pIII 450. would there be a noticible difference in performance?

[Kezzer]

I know XP Pro supports Dual Processors, not sure on how well it utilizes it. One thing to remember i was taught back in class, dual processors = double the performance but on the software side, i haven't got a clue.

[Stringent]

Well I have dual processor rig, two 1ghz PIII with 1GB of RAM. Comparing it to my single 1ghz which I had, I can say that the dual seems smoother generally in some applications, ie Photoshop, Windows, but in honesty I would go back to using my single any day. In games especially the dual just didn't seem to cut it, maybe the mobo I have is rubbish I don't know, if applications aren't written to take use of dual processor, the single will always shine.

Duals are mainly for CAD, 3DMAX and server type stuff. Us chaps should just stick to good old single CPU's for processing. GOod idea in theory, but in reality, not much.

[BlueBot]

you won't get much more speed to be honest. Don't think many games support MP, think Doom 3 might (please correct me if I'm wrong). Although XP does indeed support 2 processors and it's very cool too go into task manager and see a pretty graph for both processor, it's not really worth it to be honest. You will see some performance increase, of course, you can in fact task one processor to handle a certain programme, so if you have a programme that requires a lot of processor time (eg seti etc) you could allocate it to CPU #2 for example. But in short in real world apps it don't make any difference as most programmes can't multi-process. However it is cool to have a MP rig...

Steve

[bluephi1914]

ok, thats what i was thinking.. thanks... i will stick with my single processor... and just get a board with one processor, not the dual

[Benjamin]

Dual Athlon XP's don't perform much better than a single Athlon XP, the dual Intel Xeon processors increase performance (220 on sysmark 2002).

[Jiff Lemon]

hope this isnt a stupid question, BUT

do boards that have dual processors really out perform single board processors, or do you have to have operating system and software that will take advantage of the technology before i will actually notice a difference?

I have a pIII 450 slot 1, and was looking at buying a older asus p2b-d dual processor board and getting another pIII 450. would there be a noticible difference in performance?

With older stuff, it's generally not worth it. Trying to find a matched pair of CPU's can be a nightmare. Plus you'd get a better performance hit by replacing the board + chip for something a little newer!

[Stringent]

However it is cool to have a MP rig...
Steve

Yeah, that is what I think, although I am getting a lot of quirks with my system and its beginning to annoy me. Don't like quirks ...

[Capt Doufos]

Dual CPU's doesn't mean double the performance.

Remember they still use the same RAM and BUS in most cases. Also some CPU cycles are used in splitting the workload.

As has been said. Most games will only use one CPU, although this does mean if you have other stuff running in the background it won't effect your game very much. You get this benifit with HT. Before that I never used to be able to run background tasks at the same time as a game.

[BEANFro Elite]

yeah also the mobos are carp compared with the single cpu ones, i'd go for intel HT cpu myself.

[insane.k]

Yeah def go for a new mobo etc... Did the same just to experiment with Dual processors etc, you'll probably regret it- as if you spend the money on a new rig you can have the benifits of faster RAM etc. Especially coz p3's are still pretty expensive (comparably to fater processors). Tho if you do experiment with differnet OS's (if its not your main rig) I've heard solaris performs best for dual processors. Especi