Dual CPU's vs Single

[TOK2000]

Is there much if any advantage to a Dual Athlon MP 2000+ CPU Configuration vs a Single Intel Pentium IV (2.2 or 2.4) if you are running Windows 2000 or XP?

Will Applications like PhotoShop and MS Office take advantage of Dual CPU's.

Reason I ask is that you can get Dual MP's for the same price as a single P4 (2.2 or 2.4)

 

[FatBurger]

Photoshop will, I believe. Office won't.

The other advantage is that you can run programs on different processors, so you can be running a huge macro in Excel, and it won't slow down reading your email (at least not nearly as much).

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[digikid]

We find that our 2*dual PIII-800 (4 PCU's clustered with Mosix) system is excellent for running a Linux server with some 10-15 X-terminals hooked up to it. Meaning that a dual machine these days is pretty powerful and can run a lot of simultaneous processes. Most of what people do is read email, web-surf, and then there's the ongoing number-crunches that'll be sent off to the second node, so that there's always CPUs available.

I don't know about Photoshop ( I hear it's pretty demanding), but I can't imagine that Office would require too much resources, so a single CPU should do. If Windows has fixed they're poor multitasking-performance, then perhaps it would take advantage of multiple CPUs, and I would certainly hope that they have: Windows has bugged me for years: you start something CPU intensive, and the system HANGS completely until that job is done. There's just no way, it seems, to even move the mouse and try and be productive beyond the running process.

If you're running a multiuser system, then I would definitely go for multiple CPUs, but for home use... I don't know. Then, of course, If you can get a dual AMD for the price of a single P4, the choice should be easy: get the dual system. Each AMD processor should approx. equal a P4 (top-of-the-line) these days, so you'll get twice the potential for performance!