Dual cpu boards
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Black_Cat
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A dually is probably not worth it to you. It's nice for multitasking but there isn't much software that utilizes two processors. In fact, for gaming you will probably lose performance.
<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020211/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020211/index.html</A>
To start press any key. Where's the "any" key? --Homer Simpson.
<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020211/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020211/index.html</A>
To start press any key. Where's the "any" key? --Homer Simpson.
Skipper007
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I thought I had read once that the version of Quake 3 you use makes a difference in dual CPU performance, but I'm not entirely sure.
54FPS DIVX encoding would be sweet...
54FPS DIVX encoding would be sweet...
The problem with benchmarks like Winstone and Sysmark is that they grossly skew the importance of singular speed over cpu-availability in real usage patterns.
Few apps besides mpeg encoding personally take advantage of SMP, but there's one very, very important "app" that puts it to VERY good use -- Windows XP. Even if the individual apps themselves don't take advantage of SMP, XP can assign one thread to each CPU.
There IS one sizeable group that invariably gets overlooked and ignored by articles judging the worth of SMP, even though they're probably the gold standard of a group that can benefit from it: programmers.
Take, for instance, a developer who builds Java web applications. At any given moment in time, he's probably got all of the following running:
* Norton Antivirus
* Tomcat (JSP/Servlet web server)
* Forte, Netbeans, or Eclipse (3 popular IDEs)
* 2-10 instances of Internet Explorer or Mozilla
* a text editor for taking quick notes and use as a text scratchpad
as well as one or more of the following:
* Visio, Rational Rose, or some other UML app
* Outlook, Outlook Express, or some other mail app
* Secure CRT, or some other terminal app
* one or more command windows, or maybe even a Cygwin shell
None of those programs individually make any effort to put two CPUs to good use... but give Windows XP two CPUs to play with, and it will keep both of them spectacularly busy and give the kind of night-and-day palpable performance boost that will spoil you forever and make even a 2.4GHz single CPU system feel sluggish compared to a dualie 1800 system.
Of course, a similar argument could be made for giving such a system to a serious web developer, who's probably running:
* Norton Antivirus
* Photoshop
* Dreamweaver
* Flash
* 2-10 instances of Internet Explorer or Mozilla
* one or more components of Office XP (Word, Outlook, etc.)
In this case, it's not QUITE a night-and-day difference, but it'll still be easily perceptible as long as the system has enough ram to eliminate THAT as a choke point (say, 768 megs to 1 gig).
On the other hand, even a lowly office worker running productivity apps would probably be happier with a dualie 1400-1800 system in lieu of a 50% faster single cpu system. Winstone DOESN'T tell the whole story. Winstone measures how quickly it can perform a scripted OLE runthrough of common office apps, RUN ONE AT A TIME. How many people actually exit Word before loading IE or Outlook? I'd venture a fair guess that the following apps running simultaneously represent a FAR more realistic use case:
* Norton Antivirus
* one or more instant messaging apps
* Word, Excel, and/or Powerpoint
* Outlook or Outlook Express
* a half-dozen instances of Internet Explorer
In the office "productivity" user's case, the holdup isn't likely to be lack of raw speed... it's momentary hangs and glitches caused by one or more apps needlessly hogging the CPU or making blocking system calls -- many of which are timeout-based and will happen REGARDLESS of how fast the CPU is. Replace a single blazingly fast CPU with two CPUs that are 20% slower and together cost as much as a single faster one, and his computer experience will almost CERTAINLY improve. He'll become easier to support, too... because he'll be less likely to start filling the event queue with multiple mouse clicks whenever Windows hiccups and becomes unresponsive for a second or two -- something that happens FAR more often than anyone really cares to admit.
IMHO, a FAR better test (assuming it would actually run) to show the advantage of dual CPUs would be to run high-end Winstone and Sysmark SIMULTANEOUSLY. Assuming it worked, the dualie system would purr along. The single CPU system would utterly choke. Suddenly, the dualie's razor-thin score advantage would become INSTANTLY obvious.
Far from being a contrived, artificial benchmark, running both at once would go a LONG way towards replicating the usage patterns of REAL users who DO run multiple apps at the same time.
Few apps besides mpeg encoding personally take advantage of SMP, but there's one very, very important "app" that puts it to VERY good use -- Windows XP. Even if the individual apps themselves don't take advantage of SMP, XP can assign one thread to each CPU.
There IS one sizeable group that invariably gets overlooked and ignored by articles judging the worth of SMP, even though they're probably the gold standard of a group that can benefit from it: programmers.
Take, for instance, a developer who builds Java web applications. At any given moment in time, he's probably got all of the following running:
* Norton Antivirus
* Tomcat (JSP/Servlet web server)
* Forte, Netbeans, or Eclipse (3 popular IDEs)
* 2-10 instances of Internet Explorer or Mozilla
* a text editor for taking quick notes and use as a text scratchpad
as well as one or more of the following:
* Visio, Rational Rose, or some other UML app
* Outlook, Outlook Express, or some other mail app
* Secure CRT, or some other terminal app
* one or more command windows, or maybe even a Cygwin shell
None of those programs individually make any effort to put two CPUs to good use... but give Windows XP two CPUs to play with, and it will keep both of them spectacularly busy and give the kind of night-and-day palpable performance boost that will spoil you forever and make even a 2.4GHz single CPU system feel sluggish compared to a dualie 1800 system.
Of course, a similar argument could be made for giving such a system to a serious web developer, who's probably running:
* Norton Antivirus
* Photoshop
* Dreamweaver
* Flash
* 2-10 instances of Internet Explorer or Mozilla
* one or more components of Office XP (Word, Outlook, etc.)
In this case, it's not QUITE a night-and-day difference, but it'll still be easily perceptible as long as the system has enough ram to eliminate THAT as a choke point (say, 768 megs to 1 gig).
On the other hand, even a lowly office worker running productivity apps would probably be happier with a dualie 1400-1800 system in lieu of a 50% faster single cpu system. Winstone DOESN'T tell the whole story. Winstone measures how quickly it can perform a scripted OLE runthrough of common office apps, RUN ONE AT A TIME. How many people actually exit Word before loading IE or Outlook? I'd venture a fair guess that the following apps running simultaneously represent a FAR more realistic use case:
* Norton Antivirus
* one or more instant messaging apps
* Word, Excel, and/or Powerpoint
* Outlook or Outlook Express
* a half-dozen instances of Internet Explorer
In the office "productivity" user's case, the holdup isn't likely to be lack of raw speed... it's momentary hangs and glitches caused by one or more apps needlessly hogging the CPU or making blocking system calls -- many of which are timeout-based and will happen REGARDLESS of how fast the CPU is. Replace a single blazingly fast CPU with two CPUs that are 20% slower and together cost as much as a single faster one, and his computer experience will almost CERTAINLY improve. He'll become easier to support, too... because he'll be less likely to start filling the event queue with multiple mouse clicks whenever Windows hiccups and becomes unresponsive for a second or two -- something that happens FAR more often than anyone really cares to admit.
IMHO, a FAR better test (assuming it would actually run) to show the advantage of dual CPUs would be to run high-end Winstone and Sysmark SIMULTANEOUSLY. Assuming it worked, the dualie system would purr along. The single CPU system would utterly choke. Suddenly, the dualie's razor-thin score advantage would become INSTANTLY obvious.
Far from being a contrived, artificial benchmark, running both at once would go a LONG way towards replicating the usage patterns of REAL users who DO run multiple apps at the same time.
dougjensen
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- Feb 22, 2001
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I agree -- my experience is that a dual processor motherboard is a major win for people like me that are not gamers but instead have many large CPU-intensive programs running concurrently.
Now I'd like to ask what dual processor motherboards people recommend. I've been using SuperMicro boards (a company that seems to never appear in Tom's or anyone else's reviews and ratings). Thank you.
--
Doug
Now I'd like to ask what dual processor motherboards people recommend. I've been using SuperMicro boards (a company that seems to never appear in Tom's or anyone else's reviews and ratings). Thank you.
--
Doug
One of the weirder ones that I saw recently is the IPOX M762U (http://www.i-pox.net/M762U.htm). If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that particular motherboard looks like it was designed to fit in a Shuttle (www.spacewalker.com) SFF form-factor cube enclosure. It's a shame it lacks AGP and has such a miserably awful video chipset... A SFF-ready 760MPX mobo with AGP and at least one other PCI slot would be be pretty cool if Shuttle could pull it off...
Skipper007
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- Oct 10, 2002
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An SSF Athlon MP would be cool, but I don't think it's possible. In addition to the fact it would make for a really complex heat pipe, it would probably blow the little 200 watt PSU Shuttle uses.
Supermicro or Tyan are both good names. But no overclocking features.
Then you get the usual Asus/Abit/MSI boards.
First decide what processors, then what chipset you want to run.
Two PIII-1000EBs + dual i815 board = US$250
Two MP 1600s + dual MPX board = US$450
Two Xeon 1.8s + dual i860 board = US$800
I run two PIII-800Es on an Asus P2B-D (i440BX).
- JW
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by JCLW on 10/27/02 04:49 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
Then you get the usual Asus/Abit/MSI boards.
First decide what processors, then what chipset you want to run.
Two PIII-1000EBs + dual i815 board = US$250
Two MP 1600s + dual MPX board = US$450
Two Xeon 1.8s + dual i860 board = US$800
I run two PIII-800Es on an Asus P2B-D (i440BX).
- JW
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by JCLW on 10/27/02 04:49 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
dougjensen
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- Feb 22, 2001
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I already agreed with jskubik that Win2K and WinXP Pro, together with lots of running (not just open) big cpu-intensive apps, makes a good case for a dual processor system. I am not (as one of Tom's columnists describes himself) "an Office guy." I just did some quickie informal experiments with my dual-processor system. I eyeballed and "felt" the system's performance with the normal two processors, then with just one installed. The loss of throughput and smoothness of multitasking with just one processor was really obvious; I would never go back to a single-processor system of any speed. I'll note that my system has 4GB of RDRAM and a terabyte of Ultra160 SCSI RAID 5 on 64-bit PCI controllers; lots of RAM and HDD bsndwidth is important with a dual-processor system. BTW, I'm sad to say that there are useful programs that don't work on dual-processor systems -- Norton Utilities and Partition Magic being examples.
--
Doug
--
Doug
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