Toms Dualie Article

[lhgpoobaa]

decent all round... but what i LOVED was the sassive framerate increase when doing Divx video encoding! YUM. 54fps.

comments?

Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!

 

[camieabz]

I was impressed with the honesty of the review certainly. It reaffirmed my suspicions of the desire to go to dual systems. Not much point unless you're running a server or one of the types of apps mentioned for being able to utilise the CPU power at hand.

I was keen on a dual system for a while (money being the main problem), but now I think I'll wait until I can really use one.

At the current rate of CPU speed growth, we should be at 3.2GB very soon anyway. Probably best to go with a high performance XP for now, and see if the software on the market starts to lean towards dual usage.

<b><font color=blue>The Cisco Kid</font color=blue></b>

 

[Guest]

I think that something that not many people understand about dual-cpu systems is that while no, you do not increase the speed of your system for the most part, you DO still achieve a more 'robust' platform. For example, I have a dualie box, and while it doesn't run any faster now that I added a second CPU, it DOES run smoother... I used to encounter quite a few pauses, jerky-cursor problems, etc.
but now that I have a second CPU, Win2K just runs rigth along under the same workload. Apps that used to bring my system to it's knees until they had finished their run now just run in the background, while my system continues to respond normally.
Is it faster with two cpus? Not really.
Is it stronger with two cpus? Hell yes.

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Very well said.......

-MeTaL RoCkEr

My <font color=red>Z28</font color=red> can take your <font color=blue>P4</font color=blue> off the line!

 

[Guest]

I very much agree w/ what was said about the dualies being stronger, the only way to explain it is that it feels right. Whenever I'm on the dual machine I feel unstoppable. I'll be rendering in 3d studio max, have music playing and be playing a game while acting as a gateway for others to surf off of. And maintaing a stability that is unheard of. Let the scores speak what they will, once you've used a dual for a while, it's near impossible to go back to one chip.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Dan_rather on 02/12/02 03:56 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

ditto.
someday i dream of running dualies.

i do alot of divx encoding, and while thats happening everything else kinda stops.
sure i can still surf, but not games or apps.

and running two cure for cancer background tasks appeals

Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!

 

[Ncogneto]

Also, at this moment the only way you can get 64 bit 66mhz pci is with a dual platform. Bandwith limitations are strting to cause some serious problems on the pci bus.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

indeed

u got the 4x agp... which is ok and is gonna be twice as big with 8x comming along, so no problems there.
but u have the pci with hard drives, sound cards, networks cards...
singly they would be ok, but we all know that 2 or more ultra fast HDD's in raid 0 will begin to approach the bandwidth limitations of the PCI, especially if your using a PCI scsi card with 10k or 15k drives

a reason i guess why via is for the vlink and why the single chip of the sis is such an elegant solution.

i love the idea of being able to encode divx and play games at the same time.



Overclocked athlon 1200C @ 8.5 x 166FSB + PC2700 = GOOD!

 

[jclw]

Another often overlooked advantage to two CPUs is stability and the ablilty to recover from what would otherwise be fatal program errors. If a program completely locks up on a uni-processor machine, often you're looking for a pen to push that little "Reset" button on the case. On a multi-processor machine you can almost always fire up the task manager on another CPU and kill the offending task.

- JW

 

[AndrewT]

a pen? are you poking the led instead of the button? LOL just a joke, all my cases got pretty big reset buttons.

<font color=red>Handsome A7V133 looking for long term relationship with a XP CPU. Prefer non smoker.</font color=red>

 

[camieabz]

Why? Do you use your reset button more often?

<b><font color=blue>The Cisco Kid</font color=blue></b>

 

[AndrewT]

hell no, mine are just bigger. last time I seen one with that small reset button was in the 486 ages, owned one like that.

<font color=red>Handsome A7V133 looking for long term relationship with a XP CPU. Prefer non smoker.</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

yeah? well, then, I'm sitting on a bunch of extra cash right now and I'm gonna spend it on a rig. That's what I'm here for, info and advice. So is it possible to get a low-level dual in the same pricerange as, say a abit kr7a+axp1800? casing, cd-r etc is the same anyway, right?


<font color=black><A HREF="http://www.menvafan.net/index_e.html" target="_new">1000 punkx, 1000 punx!</A></font color=black>

 

[shloader]

That crap article answered none of my questions and most was irrelevant. Mentions that it's used by DVD hobbiests and yet shows no Mpeg2 encoding benches and goes to DivX (ever heard of Tmpgenc?). Runs quake3 not in SMP but still shows benchmarks... worthless. Mentions that XPs and MPs are both enabled for SMP but uses a MP1900 and says nothing as to why he didn't touch XP2000 for test. Says you need buffered ram for stability? And what stability problems were encountered with good Cas2 unbuffered ram? Did he even try?

Motherboard reviews here are getting more dry all the time. I'd like to know if it's possible to use to XP2000s or am I stuck to MP1900s. I'd like to know if a MP1900 benches better than a XP1900. Would it have helped to use unbuffered CAS2? If so how much? If there were any stability issues then what were they?

Instead we got a review that answered essentially nothing. You get more info from people here.


Intel is god, cleanroom is life, and the wafers are all that matter.

 

[jclw]

What do you want it for?

The thing is: If you want to play Quake 6 at 1280x1024 at 1,000,000fps* (*actual results may differ) like you do on your XP 2000 then you'll need two of them which will push the price right up. However, if you're using multithreaded applications you can get away with two processors that are half the speed.

I run:
- Asus P2B-D (@112FSB)
- 512MB PC133 (@112MHz CAS2)
- 2x PIII-800 (@900)
- Radeon 32 SDR
- Highpoint 370 ATA100 RAID on a PCI card
- etc, etc...

Notes:
- It beats Tom's (single) XP-2000 Sandra scores
- I think the last time it crashed was in september.

Anyways, my advice is don't go VIA. They may be a little cheaper, even a smaller bit faster, but spend the extra $50 and get something that doesn't crash. Intel is well established in the SMP area. It's hard to wrong with a couple of intel chips on an intel or SeverWorks chipset. Of course you'll pay for it, especially if you want P4 (Xeons) or Tualatin chips. AMD is both faster and cheaper, but I would not advise buying a dual AMD system until: #1) they release the fixed MPX southbridge and #2) you can buy 0.13 micron chips so you don't have to mortage your house to pay the electricity bill. The 0.13 chips will also run cooler meaning less fan noise. However you'll have to wait 3 or 4 months before AMD gets everything in order. 0.13 micron AMD chips will also (but probably not initially) be cheaper because you get a higher yeild out of the same size slab of silicon.

If you're looking for a cheap duallie to buy right now I'd suggest:
- <A HREF="http://www.acorpusa.com/6a815epd1.htm" target="_new">Acorp 6A815EPD1</A> (also available with onboard 0/1 RAID) This is the only dual i815 based board out there, and the couple of people I know with them say they run amazingly well. Pick one up <A HREF="http://brimarcomputers.safeshopper.com/12/24.htm?999" target="_new">here for US$114</A>
- 2x PIII-1000 They should run you about US$120 each. MAKE SURE YOU GET TWO CHIPS OF THE "cD0" STEPPING. Or look for some PIII-1.13 chips but again make sure they are "cD0" (NOT Tualatin)
- 512MB of decent PC133 should run you less then US$100.

So that adds up to about US$450 for the board, processors, and the ram. I don't know what you'd pay for an Abit KR7a, XP-1800, and 512MB or DDR.

Anyways, hope that helped, I should go cook dinner
- JW

edit: re: shloader
- "I'd like to know if it's possible to use to XP2000s or am I stuck to MP1900s." Yes, you can.
- "I'd like to know if a MP1900 benches better than a XP1900." No they are the same.
- "Would it have helped to use unbuffered CAS2? If so how much?" Sorry, I don't know
- "If there were any stability issues then what were they?" Judging by the number of people posting in forums with dual MPX problems I'd say there is a chance you might have problems...
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by JCLW on 02/14/02 06:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

(...) buy 0.13 micron chips so you don't have to mortage your house to pay the electricity bill

not a prob right now, I'm unemployed on welfare and don't have to pay my bill . All the small benefits, you know.
I want it because of stability caouse the worst thing I know is crashes and bogging.
I'm gonna do some multimedia-editing, mainly music /softsynths, some photoshop/gimp, a _lot_ of web and of course some gaming too.
However, I have an uncanny ability to find new demanding tasks for my computer and a _very_ limited budget, so I want all possibilities open. This rig is gonna be with me for at least five years, likely longer.

<A HREF="http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6047" target="_new">my pacifist summer holiday</A> :frown:

 

[Pettytheft]

"Both boards are supplied with special additional cards that include four USB 2.0 ports. A special feature of the MSI card is that it has an internal USB port. Asus, too, has its peculiarities: the USB card can operate in one of the 64-bit PCI slots."

Dont make me laugh, the damn USB doesn't work on the MPX chipset so they sent USB cards to fix the problem. I dont know why they failed to mention this in their article.

If you were to use any USB items on a MPX chipset, you lose one PCI slot. All of the motherboards (With the exception of the Tyan) only have 3 pci slots. So by slapping in that USB card, your left with two PCI slots. I dunno, failing to mention a broken chipset seems careless to me.

Blah, Blah Blahh, Blahh, blahh blah blahh, blah blah.

 

[mbetea]

yes, i don't see using a usb card as a justifiable fix. what if something was wrong with the ide controllers? would they have still released the boards with promise pci controllers? not to mention if you use a usb kb on the usb card, you can't get into bios, hope you have a ps/2 kb or happen to have an adapter around. i don't know of anyone that has been able to get the board to post with the usb card in one of the 64/66 slots on the asus. i've even seen a couple people that were not able to get their promise fasttraktx2 controllers to operate in them and those are supposed to be able to operate at 66mhz. come to think of it, i haven't heard of one person yet that has successfully used a card in the 64/66 slots. that's probably why i'm looking at a dual pIII-S setup. might be a bit slower, but it's got functioning onboard usb and 5-6 functional pci slots.

[insert philosophical statement here]

 

[Pettytheft]

How much are you going to spend? It's not popular and it's more expensive than your average setup but for around $1200 you could get dual 1.8 Prestonia's a <A HREF="http://www.supermicro.com/product/motherboards/860/P4DCE+.htm" target="_new">Supermicro P4DCE+</A> and 512 MB of Ram. It's an expensive start but Supermicro=maximum stability, and with dual 1.8's + Rambus it should satisfy your performance needs. Then again dual Tualatins aint bad either.

Blah, Blah Blahh, Blahh, blahh blah blahh, blah blah.

 

[mbetea]

right now it's a toss up. i was looking at 2x1.26 PIII-S on either supermicro's p3tdde or iwill's dvd266u-RN. the reason considering the iwill is i have a gig of ddr already i could pop in there w/out buying more. then get 256 or something for this machine. i would look at the tigerMP, but it doesn't seem to be to kind with unbuffered ram.

[insert philosophical statement here]

 

[Pettytheft]

The P3TDDE is a very good stable board. The Iwill dvd266u-rn is a very fast tweakable board. However it carries it's load of quirks. I own the dvd266 (NonTualatin) board myself. Plain and simple, this board works great with the exception of the onboard sound. As soon as it's enabled I've actually gotten a BSOD. Supposedly this was fixed with the Tualatin version (It's a different sound chip all together) but check the <A HREF="http://forums.2cpu.com/forumdisplay.php?s=2b2d94d6ccc3248b7589fea475fb1c3e&forumid=13" target="_new">2CPU Forums</A> for some more info if you haven't already.

Blah, Blah Blahh, Blahh, blahh blah blahh, blah blah.

 

[shloader]

Being as I've made wafers I know about the yield and price trade off. Got jabbed by that same scenario when I bought my First Classic Athlon 750 and the Tbirds were out. Those chips costed a little more but two months later the difference was the same but in the opposite dirrection. Right now I've yet to see the .13 so... dunno yet. Also as to what I'm going to use it for? Mostly Video editing and Mpeg2 encoding, just like the article started off. Not touching DivX with a system like this. It'd be overkill. Not concerned about broken USB 1.0 on the southbridge if everything else works fine. My asus board that I have shipping to me now has a 2.0 card... /me shruggs. Ok trade off.

Intel is god, cleanroom is life, and the wafers are all that matter.

 

[jclw]

You get free electricity on welfare?

- JW

 

[mbetea]

thanks. i'm sorta leaning towards the iwill at the moment. i saw a thread on 2cpu about the p3tdde, there looks to be a memory bandwidth problem. making it perform below a bx board w/ 2x 700 cpus (from what one person that benchmarked said). there was quite a few on that forum and there were others. i was going through the iwill manual, very elaborate bios, which i like. gives you options for setting just about anything.

but then again, i'll be looking to do this in the next week or two, so if somehow mpx boards with fixed usb start appearing i might think about it.

[insert philosophical statement here]

 

[Guest]

you get free electricity on welfare?

I live in sweden, they changed the welfare standards a couple of years ago so you'll get your electricity bill refunded by the social office. Phone bill you still pay on your own so I got adsl w/ flat rate.

<A HREF="http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6047" target="_new">my pacifist summer holiday</A> :frown: