single or dual CPU?

On avarage the difference seems to be 40% speed difference between dual and single cpu. At least that is what I have read.
AREA_51

'It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames'

It really depends on what progs you use and how. If you use max, especially for movies than stay with SMP. Max 5, I am not sure of earlier versions, uses it for the viewports as well as render so is much better for high polygon stuff, epecially if it is animated. If you do low polygon stuff where you like to have your 3d editor and a texture prog open at once, a dual would be better also. Keep in mind as well that the fastest P4 with HT costs more than a two 2400MPs or P4 2.4 533 xenons. The motherboard is going to cost a bit more than a quality single cpu one. Supermicro makes a 533 xenon workstation board in ATX with an 8x AGP slot, not EATX form factor, that is cheap as far as those boards go. AMD boards start at about $200 (they do not support 8x agp, only 4x max) and the supermicro w/8x agp one is about $340. Aside from cost, the only disadvantages of a dual are 1 they do you no better at games and 2 hardware often does not play nice with other hardware or OS. As for 2, once you get them stable they are really really stable and can be left on for weeks at a time even with m$. If you go amd, you can convert an XP into an MP fairly easily, but with great risk and voiding any warranty. MP's cost more than XP's. but function the same. Try http://www.2cpu.com forums for your application specific needs to see if dual is better for you.

3d animation with 3dmax benefits almost entirely (100% gain) from 2 cpus, but only the final rendering stages. So if rendering is your business, then keeping dual would be the thing. Only if you render a lot, though. Most other rendering programs are also multi-threaded.

Also, bear in mind that there are better chipsets and greater variety of dual processors from intel than from AMD (when you bought the dual MPs, they were probably the best deal, but the picture has changed). With dual Xeons, you´d get a (logical) quad-processor sytem. So dual 2.4Ghz 533Mhz Xeons would be the sweet spot, I guess.

Remember, AMD760MP is a terribly inefficient platform.

Just as a reminder, the 3d-rendering performance of the latest 3.06Ghz P4 w/HT is equal (according to aceshardware) to a dual 2000+ MP from AMD! So, if you can afford it (or wait for the next price drop) the 3Ghz P4 is an excellent single processor for your needs. Plus, you wouldn´t have to pay for any dual xeon boards (which are expensive) and would get dual logical processors, and excellent single-threaded app performance as well.

a Dual P4 2.4 533 fsb have low cost and are fast also 4X more bandwith that AMD platform.

a Single P4 3.06 HT is also a revelating to SMT software as is fast on single or multi tread software.

[-peep-] french