Turbo Drive: Two Dual Boards with 2000 MHz

Conclusion: Dual CPU Boards Only For Special Applications

To keep it short: Dual CPU motherboards can only perform up to capacity in special applications. Included herein are rendering and animation programs that spread their processing load rather evenly on both CPUs. This fact is reflected impressively by our benchmark results from 3D Studio Max R3 and Cinema 4D XL 5.3. Otherwise, the utilization of a second CPU in daily operation falls short of the expectations. Even software for video editing - such as the popular Adobe Premiere - uses the capacity of two processors only minimally. An operating system supporting dual processor platforms is necessary in any case: Windows 2000 Pro and Windows NT 4.0 as well as Linux support this function. Nevertheless, the user profits from the application of a dual CPU system: A dual system shows significant advantages over the single system particularly when running several tasks simultaneously. The system load is much lower.

A direct comparison of the Intel and VIA chipsets reveals the following: In our test, the VIA Apollo Pro 133A dual version on the Asus CUV4X-D is slightly faster than the Intel 815E on the Acorp 6A815D. Since the Acorp board is an early Beta sample, no final conclusion can be drawn about its performance. That much is certain: A dual board is in any case more expensive than a model with just one CPU socket. The balance sheet comparing a dual CPU system to a single CPU system is shown in the table below.

Example of a dual CPU system configuration compared to that of a single system. Especially the price for a second CPU makes a big difference and raises the cost of the dual system immensely.