What kind of gains can I expect w/dual processors

[G.I.O.]

In a recent prior post I explained my desire to upgrade from my current
video editing system running a Dell PIII, 1ghz, W2K to a Dell PIII Dual
1.7ghz, W2K.

My question is... are most current processor intensive programs like
Adobe products (Photoshop, Premiere, After Affects, etc.) designed to
run with a dual processor system?

Is there any way to determine what the gain in speed
(rendering/processing time) would be?

Is there any downside to using a dual processor system running W2K?

Thanks!

 

[Stubby]

In a recent prior post I explained my desire to upgrade from my current
video editing system running a Dell PIII, 1ghz, W2K to a Dell PIII Dual
1.7ghz, W2K.

My question is... are most current processor intensive programs like
Adobe products (Photoshop, Premiere, After Affects, etc.) designed to
run with a dual processor system?

Is there any way to determine what the gain in speed
(rendering/processing time) would be?

Is there any downside to using a dual processor system running W2K?

The programs you mention are single-thread programs. As such multiple
CPUs will not make anything faster. Traditionally, going back to the
'60s, a second processor makes the system speed up only 1.6 times and
that is only if it is running a multiuser timesharing system or
something that can use it. So the overhead of managing the second CPU
costs quite a bit. There is lots of computer science literature on this
subject.

 

[G.I.O.]

Is there any way to know (or how do you know) if a program is single threaded
or if it will benefit by a dual processor system?

 

[Stubby]

Is there any way to know (or how do you know) if a program is single threaded
or if it will benefit by a dual processor system?

Not directly, but you can guess that something like a word processor
isn't going to do something like fire up a dozen net connections to get
your edits done.

One place where there is a sort of multiprocessing happening but without
you knowing it is in the 64 bit systems. My understanding is that
they can process 8 8-bit streams at a time and in parallel. This will
be much faster than doing the 8 streams one at a time sequentially. But
it only happens in certain signal processing and video processing
applications. Maybe some matrix manipulations will take advantage.
Radar and sonar data processing might use it. But these are really
single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) programs. They are not
multiprocessing like a timesharing system is.

 

[Mac Townsend]

I think you'd gain more with a faster than 1.7 processor.

 

[Andrew Morton]

The programs you mention are single-thread programs...

Adobe Photoshop will use more than one processor if available. I would be
surprised if the others specifically mentioned did not.

Andrew