Dual Processors or Fast Processor

[Adam]

I know this is a little off topic but I'm getting ready to
build myself a new computer and I am really drawn to the
idea of having two processors. So my question is should I
buy 2 $300 processors of just dump $600 on a really fast
processor? What will give my computer the most power? Two
brains or one fast brain?

I pretty much use my PC for gaming, burning CDs, watching
movies, and surfing the internet. I will also be running
XP Professional.

 

[RJW]

I know this is a little off topic but I'm getting ready to
build myself a new computer and I am really drawn to the
idea of having two processors. So my question is should I
buy 2 $300 processors of just dump $600 on a really fast
processor? What will give my computer the most power? Two
brains or one fast brain?

I pretty much use my PC for gaming, burning CDs, watching
movies, and surfing the internet. I will also be running
XP Professional.

You won't get any advantage of having 2 CPU's unless you use software that
is written expressly for use with dual processors.

 

[Patrick]

That is not necessarily true ("Adam's" statement about dual cpu software).
I had to ask myself the same question when it came time to make use of my
"computer budget".
And I'll tell you, I went with a single CPU setup, but duals are still
appealing.
While it is true that you won't reap the complete benefits of a dual CPU
setup without programs like Adobe Premier etc that can make use of both
CPU's, Windows XP Professional itself DOES make use of both.
There are pro's and cons to both setups, but you'd be better off with a
single CPU configuration, as your money will go further.
Especially now that there are the 800Mhz FSB motherboards out on the Intel
side, you've got killer bandwidth inside your machine so your single CPU can
go further.
I'm sure lots of people have opinions on the matter, lets hear what someone
else has to say.

Patrick

 

[RJK]

e.g. some server software that is written to use two cpu's. Not much else
is written to use two cpu's ....I think I read somewhere ages ago that SETI
can be configured to use two cpu's !

I'm "itching" to put a new innards in my PC but, I know my "old" Asus A7A266
/ 1.4ghz 512mb ddram PC2100 so well, and it's so "usable" in terms of
response, i.e. really swift - currently dual booting W98se and XP pro,
(ignoring the last week or so when W98se started heading relentlessly down
the pan which was mostly my own fault, when Norton became knackered, and I
tried to manually delete every Norton and Symantec registry key I could
find, which with hindsight was daft because I subsequently fancied that I
distantly remembered that MS bought in some code from Symantec and
incorporated it into W98se) ...but, thanx to eldergeek and aumha and a few
other fantastic sites info. on dual booting, I reinstalled W98se, (even
pointing the system to driver *.inf's on my 2nd hd as hardware was detected
during W98se installation rather than sort out yellow/black exclamation
points in Device Manager after installation), AND got my favourite apps.
and utilities installed and the W98se platform COMPLETELY RETWEAKED to the
way I like it inside 6 hours, across about two days without a single invalid
page fault, and without any sign of a fault or unhappy software mix, and no
trace of dll hell !

....did any of that make any sense?

While I've been recently drooling over various motherboards and cpu's, I was
horrified to discover that a "new" feature added to realtively recent ddr
based boards is "dual channel." !!! This was on one of my older boards
YEARS and YEARS ago and was called "bank switching" or something like that.
I'm sure that this memory bank "interleave" type feature was on an old 80386
board I had EONS ago !!! Seems like the hardware fraternity is reinventing
features that are ages old, as a marketing trick!!!

....and thanx to Brian A for pointing out that I could get my boot.ini
automatically rebuild via XP | My computer | properties .....advanced
somewhere ....choose the default dual boot OS ! ...phew ...don't I go
on and on after I've had just two glasses of wine !

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

800mhz "quad pumped" front side bus on the cpu that is really running at
200mhz (pc3200 ddram's) on the board. What a LOAD of crap it all is ! But,
I love it !

I think that my new system box innards will have to be one of these
"rip-off" P4's because I soon have to test bench and prepare "Geovision" DVR
graphics cards based security systems, whose software was developed on Intel
chipsets and cpu's, and Nvidia MX400 gpu's. The range of PC hardware for
Geovision looks limited and it looks very much like one can't run it on an
AMD based system, which is a REAL bitch. (...Geovision pci card / PC
system box based DVR systems cost out at several hundred pounds more than a
dedicated DVR box ! ) THE MARKET IS RIGGED !!

regards, Richard

 

[Rick Bean]

RJK,
I'm running two copies of SETI on my system as I write this. I've been running this dual 2.0 gHz Xeon processor system since XP was first released (actually about a month before when I was running NT 4.0!). I've found that two processors are really useful in my job - I'm a software developer. On a single processor box if I did something stupid to "burn" a processor, it was virtually impossible to stop it, and so I had to reboot. With a two processor box, I've always got access to one processor to kill the out of control task and it makes things much more productive.

While you are right that there are very few products that can take advantage of both processors at once, it's really great for true multitasking - that's what Windows is all about! Let something run flat out in the background and still be able to do other things without bothering it.

I remember that Jerry Pournelle used to always write in his Byte magazine column - "One processor per person, one processor per task". While this was back in the days of CP/M and MP/M, I think there is still some validity in that idea.

Rick