Dual cpus, what's the advantage?

[EvilHorace]

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?

[Executioner]

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.

[bluewhale]

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! )

[nexus_7]

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

[DocSilly]

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.

[EvilHorace]

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.

[bluewhale]

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

[DocSilly]

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.

[Executioner]

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.