Dual Xeon with Hyperthreading?

[santi]

Hello, I plan on buying a dual xeon system and running as many game servers as possible within our local lan on this one server. My question is, do the dual processors help me in any way? It seems that every article I can find says that applications have to be multi-threaded in order to work with MP boards. Does this mean I might as well just buy a single p4 and forget about any CPU gain from the 2nd CPU, and especially no gain from Hyperthreading?

I was sort of assuming that if I was running multiple applications that each application could run on a seperate CPU and why wouldn't hyperthreading also apply with multiple applications?

I can't seem to find any benchmarks comparing a single CPU system running multipe applications to an MP system running multiple applications.

Sorry for my ignorance,

-santi

 

[slvr_phoenix]

If you're actually running multiple heavy CPU usage applications, then dual CPUs will help. If you're just going to run Internet Explorer while you serve up a game, then no, it probably won't help enough to be worth the cost.

But then, some game engines (I believe Quake3, if not more) are now being written to support multi-threading, so for them multiple CPUs will help.

<A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/comic/171.htm" target="_new">The corpse you find may be your own.</A> - Black Mage

 

[mbetea]

for a gaming server, i'd personally buy a single p4 and 1gig of ram. you'll get better performance from the server having ample amounts of ram more than dual cpus.

THG; the Jerry Springer of hardware review sites.

 

[bront]

If it's simply going to be a game server though, does it need a Xeon? Will it be worth the extra 500 or so over a good pentium or athlon system?

English is phun.