Dual - Who's It For And How Much Is It?

One thing was abundantly clear from the get-go - a board with twin processors is only worthwhile if you run rendering applications such as 3D Studio Max or Cinema 4D XL relatively often. If that's not the case, then purchasing a dual-system is more a question of prestige. Don't play down the importance of a nicely set-up dual-system as a conversation piece at a LAN party, for example. Users with this kind of equipment can rub elbows with the best of party guests and really stir up conversation. On the other hand, a second CPU ensures that sufficient performance reserves remain when running office applications under Windows 2000, particularly when several applications are running at the same time.

The boards we tested are priced between $125 (Gigabyte GA-6VXDC7) and $200 (Asus CUV4X-D).

The Boards At A Glance

The majority of the boards we tested have been available on the market for some time now. The VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset has been on the market for over a year now. The boards differ from one another predominately in terms of their features, with half of the boards coming furnished with an additional Ultra DMA/100 controller or an additional RAID controller. Rioworks has even integrated an SCSI controller on the SDVIA-SCSI.