PCA Forums

I read about more people now building/running dual cpu PCs but what's the real advantage to doing this? Is it that much faster than one very fast cpu?

You can READ THIS FAQ on dual cpu's. I just built one in December for my niece. It's a dual P2-450's running Win2k with 512 megs of ram. I was really surprised on how fast programs opened up. Must be the extra cache on the processor.

Dual CPU's might or might not help you. Both the OS and the program have to be able to make effective use of them. A W2K Server is a good example of where it might work ( Or a Metaframe Server: even better as you have dozens of virtual sessions going on at one time on one server ).
We got a Dual 800mhz Dell system for the person here who does PhotoShoppe and is teaching herself SQL... I see little improvement over a single processor system for PhotoShoppe... SQL should be able to use it, but as she is just learning we have no baseline for reference.
I've read a number of article the past years which do baseline testing on specific apps using dual or more CPU's... The impression I had from them was that they often don't do much even if they are re-written to make use of multiple CPUs.
For my own systems I far prefer DDR memory and/or RAID 5 if I can afford it Most bottlenecks are in the HD's today. ( I haven't built a SCSI sub-system in 2-3 years: I hear they are up to 15K RPM now! )

yea...better to spend your $$ on something becides a second CPU and all the extra loot needed for the mboard. SCSI is a Nice altertantive as well as higher proformance ram or a faster cpu from the get go.

Greg

Dual setups aren't worth it for the usual user, you need (as mentioned before) the right OS (Linux, NT/2000/XP) and application that are multithreaded and support multiple CPUs.
You can check the following URL from GamePC, they tested duallies with one and 2 CPUs using some software that can use the power of CPU, and stuff that doesn't (Quake2 and 3DMark2001):
http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_ ... cssid=&tp=
Another review from them puts Athlon MP's vs single samespeed XPs, bringing in the only dual CPU capable game engine (Q3 and Wolfenstein):
http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_ ... cssid=&tp=

Dual mobos have often fewer features and they usually suck for overclocking, they also often require the more expensive ECC memory and cost a good chunk more than a regular single CPU mobo.

For one using Photoshop or doing 3D development:
- Yes, they need a multi-CPU platform and all the memory they can get

For the usual PC user running ffice and games and surfing the net:
- No, unless you have way to much money to burn (in that case I can email you my banking information for money transfer).

You can get much faster single CPU setups for the price of a dual-CPU station and the faster single CPU setup will beat the dual-CPU setup in almost every situation.

I have a Seagate Barricuda X15 SCSI HDD (18 gigs) which spins at 15,000rpms and installing that HDD over a year ago definately made the PC "feel" faster than previously doubling cpu speed. There's now cpus with twice the cpu speed I'm now running (P4 2.2ghz) but I'm not sure I would really even notice the change if I spent the $$ and hassle to upgrade as it'd mean new mobo and ram again too.

I'd definately recommend a fast SCSI HDD to anyone who wants to "feel" a faster system and although it wasn't exactly an inexpensive HDD, to me it was worth the $$. I could now use more HDD space so I might add another someday.

AFter posting, I read an article in EWeek stating Adaptec is just announcing their latest controller series: this one 'streams' the data... they claim it will double the max throughput from the current 160 MB/Sec to 320 MB/sec. I just checked Adaptecs site: nothing prominent there so it must be forthcoming, but.... imagine the speed with 15,000 RPM drives in an array :chug

dreams ... I know ... dreams ... you'd need a server mobo with 64bit/66MHz PCI slots to handle the bandwidth of U320 ... and you'd need 6 x Cheetah X15-36LP drives in RAID-0 to saturate the bandwidth ... a dual CPU setup is peanuts compared to such a storage array.

btw, I love my X15, I would love to upgrade to the even faster X15-36LP but too much money ... dreams ... U320 is getting late, was supposed to be out last year.

I'm in the process of building another dualie for my brother. He's a musician and needs a decent pc to process WAV files and run mulitiple apps. So we are building a PIII-1000MHz dualie for his needs with 512 megs of ram and Win2k.