Are two processors better than one?

[robtheg]

Two heads are better than one, but does that apply to processors? I'm in the final planning stages of putting together a dual processor system. Before I go ahead, I want to make sure I won't just be throwing money away. I'm going to be using the computer both for games and for developing CAD software. What kinds of gains can I expect to see verses a single processor system?

 

[Guest]

OS to be used has to be NT4.0 or Win2000, sorry not sure about linux. I don't have experience but have heard others.
I believe(not sure) the application has to be oriented towards dual CPUs as to tell the OS to use both processor.

I would like to see more on this myself.


Take Care.
If money was no object, how could you spend it!

 

[Guest]

It's not a waste of money if you're using an OS that supports it.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Philotic on 11/16/00 11:30 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

You should definately use win2k if you get a duel CPU system, and I think it's worth getting. When using individual programs you will see only a minor improvement if the program doesn't support duel CPU's. If you're using 2 or more programs at once then win2k will happily run one program on each cpu.
As for games - Q3Arena supports 2CPU's and I think Unreal Tournament does too. Even if the game doesn't support it you'll still get some improvement because win2k will run on one cpu, and the game can have the other one all to itself.

 

[rep_stosd]

Oh yeah! I've been running dual p2-400's for a while now and love it. NT4, Win2k and linux all support 2 processors. I've got win2k and mandrake 7.2 installed and it works great. Of course, running word and excel and stuff like that doesn't use the 2 processors to the fullest. But running alot of graphics packages like 3d-studio max, maya, photoshop, afterfx...etc, will use both at the same time very well. I get speed ups of about 90% when rendering stuff for school. And like one guy said, it is great to run one program on one processor and another on the second. I like to run my mp3 player and half life CS on the other Sisoft sandra rates my cpu's at 2180 MIPS and 1056 MFLOPS if you wanted some benchmarks. I run a tyan s1832dl mobo. layda

rep_stosd