Dual Processor Motherboards

[Charles]

HI, New to this group,
I have recently set my mind on building a dual processor system, I am
extremely familiar with building systems, however, I have never tackled a
dual cpu before. With that said, I would appreciate any suggestions on
boards and processors and a reputable place to purchase them. Most
motherboards I find seem to be outdated, and I am not sure what processors
are dual capable. Would also like to say that this will be for home use,
(Gaming, video, Dvd recording), so I do not need to get top of the line
equipment (In other words, not the most expensive) I know alot of you will
think this is overkill, but I have wanted to do this for a long time, and
the time is right now. I would also like to use at least 1.8 Ghz processors,
But I am open to my options. Also....Pentium 4? or Amd? I have always used
and been satisfied with amd, has pentium gotten any better?

Thank you,
Charles

 

[David Beach]

I have a dual processor system I built five years ago based on a Tyan Tiger
100 motherboard. I started out with a single cheap Celeron mounted on a
slotkit to fit in the Slot 1 architecture. Over the years I was able to
upgrade to dual Celerons and finally dual PIIIs. By the way, the dual
Celerons were made possible by using slotkits and an engineering "feature"
that Intel has removed from later Celeron models.

I, too, have been looking at newer dual-CPU possibilities. My research is by
no means authoritative, so check things out for yourself. Intel gives a
write-up on their processors at
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-007877.htm. It seems that
you'll need Xeons if you want to build with current Intel technology. I
notice most of the dual-AMD boards call for Opteron processors, but if you
want to reduce your costs consider AMD Athalon MP 2200+ CPU's which meet
your 1.8GHz wishes. I have no experience with Gigabyte, but their GA-7DPXDW+
motherboard will support dual Athalon MP CPU's and its reasonably priced.
Tyan's http://www.tyan.com/products/html/fam_tiger.html page gives you an
idea of their offerings for dual-CPU boards. Unless you go retro, you'll be
spending US$600+ for a new motherboard and CPU's.

You can start out by populating the motherboard with only one CPU, as I did.
I started with and NT OS which installs about a half-dozen core modules as
either single-CPU or dual-CPU support. I don't know whether or not Win2000
or XP uses this same strategy. Microsoft has details on their site for
converting a single-CPU NT OS to dual-CPU OS. However, during the automated
upgrade I was asked for a key architectural detail about the motherboard
that I could not find ANY reference for. Evidently there are about five
different architectures to consider. If you guess wrong, the resulting
system does not work. I got around this problem by replacing the OS disk
temporarily and building a new OS and noting the architecture that the
installation chose. By the way, the dual-CPU modules have no problem working
with a single-CPU configuration.

To sum up, I've decided to go with P4 hyperthreading as a relatively
inexpensive alternative to dual-CPU's. Actually I'm building my next system
on a board that supports 800 FSB CPU's as well as 400 FSB CPU's. I'm
starting with a cheap Celeron and will get the P4 hyperthreading when the
cost comes down.

Good luck!

David Beach

 

[William W. Plummer]

Can you tell us what you hope to achieve with dual CPUs? I believe the
applications you describe are all single-thread programs with no opportunity
to do parallel execution. Interrupt service counts, but it is so little of
the load that it can be ignored. --Bill

 

[Bishoop]

| Can you tell us what you hope to achieve with dual CPUs? I believe the
| applications you describe are all single-thread programs with no
opportunity
| to do parallel execution. Interrupt service counts, but it is so little
of
| the load that it can be ignored. --Bill

You got that exactly correct. "Most" home users will not see any
performance improvement unless the application is written to take advantage
of multi-cpus.

 

[Christopher]

HI, New to this group,
I have recently set my mind on building a dual processor system, I am
extremely familiar with building systems, however, I have never tackled a
dual cpu before. With that said, I would appreciate any suggestions on
boards and processors and a reputable place to purchase them. Most
motherboards I find seem to be outdated, and I am not sure what processors
are dual capable. Would also like to say that this will be for home use,
(Gaming, video, Dvd recording), so I do not need to get top of the line
equipment (In other words, not the most expensive) I know alot of you will
think this is overkill, but I have wanted to do this for a long time, and
the time is right now. I would also like to use at least 1.8 Ghz processors,
But I am open to my options. Also....Pentium 4? or Amd? I have always used
and been satisfied with amd, has pentium gotten any better?

Most software especially games is for single cpued systems, so a
better more cost effective route would be to go for an 3200 amd chip
or top of the range pentium, on a good mother board like from asus,
and have 2 or 3 gig of sdram, and have a top of the range graphic
card, the system should then fly as fast as a duel cpued PC. OR you
could wait for the 64 bit componants to come down in price, but then
again 64 bit software is rare on the ground and 64 bit games are at
present just a gleam in the game developers eye.


Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

 

[DaveW]

I'm assuming you know that almost NO home software applications are designed
for multi-processing. In order to use two processors a program has to be
originally written for it. Windows XP Professional and Photoshop are about
the only programs I can think of that you might use. (XP Home will only use
one CPU).

 

[Charles]

I appreciate all the help, and was not aware that most programs did not
utilize the second processor,
( i assumed that it doubled the cpu speed i.e. 1.8 +1.8 = 3.6)does the
second processor make xp professional any faster, should it be noticeable?
Either way, I will most certainly stick with a single cpu system, I have
been out of the pc industry for about a year, any other recommendations on
processors? AMD or Pentium 4?
also recomendations for a good video card?

 

[Strontium]

-
Charles stood up at show-n-tell, in (e-mail address removed), and
said:

I appreciate all the help, and was not aware that most programs did
not utilize the second processor,

Most don't. But, they are moving towards it (at a crawl, due to
HyperThreading).

( i assumed that it doubled the cpu speed i.e. 1.8 +1.8 = 3.6)does the
second processor make xp professional any faster, should it be
noticeable?

I can, certainly, say that I notice a difference with a P4 HT processor. I
can burn/parse CD's, and do other things at the same time. Can't really
(tolerably, anyway) do that with a 'single' processor system.

Either way, I will most certainly stick with a single cpu
system, I have been out of the pc industry for about a year, any
other recommendations on processors? AMD or Pentium 4?
also recomendations for a good video card?

P4 3.0C is pretty nice. (you know that this is going to start an AMD vs.
Intel flamewar, right?

As for your video card, that would depend on what kind of gaming. But, you
mention video and dvd recording...so, it's going to come down to your wallet




--
Strontium

"And, all of your lies weren't enough to keep me....here."

- Goo Goo Dolls

 

[Erez Volach]

The OP will benefit if he is heavy on multitasking or have such backgroud
processes as a distributed project or just want uninterrupted (CD burning,
MPEG decoding, VCD converting, etc) while going on with other tasks.
No need for parallelism or MP awareness of software if it is multitasked
(and the OS is MP aware, such as NT, 2K, XP pro, linux)
Sufficient memory is about as much per CPU as is recommended per a system
with a single CPU (meaning, about twice)