dual cpu's

Unfortunately the answer is no.

The operating system must support Multiprocessors and Win 9x amd ME don't. You can use NT4, Win2K, Linux or BeOS (if you can still get it). If you want games Win2k is worth a try, but it is expensive.

>>some programs such as Adobe photoshop can make use of the second CPU whether the OS supports it or not.

I don't think so - some OSes (like Win98, Win2K) do not expose second CPU so all apps cannot see it, or use it.

'fraid i don't have a link for you but i'm prety sure that photoshop can utilize dual proc's. not qute sure what you mean by "expose second CPU" either.

At the core of every system: "I'm sorry dave, i'm afraid i can't do that."

Actually, WinNT,2k & Linux can schedule individual threads on different processors so any single application that lets you do things while something else is happening (e.g web browser) can potentially see a benefit. Only thing is, usually, the scheduler will only use the 2nd processor when the first one is at 100%, so applications won't run twice as fast if they aren't stressing the processor in the first place.

i'm uncertai and not refuting you, but mac os is not multiprocessor ready, but photoshop does see benefits from multiprocessor macs. this was one of the big scandals about mac offering multiprocessor systems, i.e. photoshop was practically the only app to utilize them.

http://support.microsoft.com/suppo [...] CH&SPR=W98

The above article states that: "Note that some third-party programs may make use of a second processor under Windows in a programmatic manner (most notably, computer-aided design [CAD] programs). The use of a secondary processor is dependent upon such a program and is usable only by that program."

I named Photoshop (5.0+) specifically because I have heard of such implementations with it... Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any info on its SMP compatibility yet. I did find that Photoshop 5 can take advantage of the the Dual G4 Mac's second processor through a software "sleight-of-hand," even without OS X. I expect that they take advantage of it in 98 the same way. I'll post back if I find out more.

--Fltsimbuff

I don't know for certain even if that will work on a Mac or not. In most OS that support SMP and multithreading/tasking the OS must be able to recognize the second CPU and if not there is no way for an application to "see" the second processor since it must receive information about the available resources in the system. Typically the application only handles being multi-threaded in its code and the OS actually handles the scheduling of the threads on individual processors and the first Proc does not have to be at 100%. Workloads are round robined by NT and Win2k and there are obviously apps such as Quake etc that take advantage of these capabilities. I often hate how articles like this are written by people who do not or have not tried one. I have worked with SMP systems since their inception in consumer systems and they work great! If you don't do multiple tasks at once or burn cds in the background then maybe you don't need one but if you were watching a DVD movie and editing a document while you also FTP'd data in the background and have a personal web server dishing up your website all running at once sounds interesting... dont try this on a single processor system.

Learn something new every day! I am particularly interested in how they accomplish this since they have to handle the particulars of synchronizing threads and locking without the OS.

I guess that is why they charge all the $$$ for those apps.