A n00b mquestion on dual cpu's

[BioNiKaL]

i heard sopmewhere that when your playing games it only utilises one cpu so dual cpu's are usless for people like me, because my 1.1 duron is doing fine for all other apps including photoshop so why bother with the dual¿

[CPFitz14]

While most games only utilize one CPU, that leaves the other CPU available for various other things. I've run two instances of Folding, burned a cd, played Tribes 2, and rendered some 3d images all at the same time; and all without a hiccup in stability.

If you're into multitasking, SMP is the way to go.;)



-CPFitz-




edit: Nice sig, i'm 15 also.;)

[JimmyK]

Im not gonna brag about SMPs "amazingness" Im tired of doing that people just need to experience it for themsevles BUT if your 1.1 works adequately for you then why waste your money on upgrading? just save it up man in a few months who knows where processors and vid cards will be.

I upgraded to this dual 2800mp athlon and its amazing I love it, couldnt have lived without it I feel, but in all honesty my dual pIII 1.0ghz was prettty nice as well, and I COULD have lived with that but for me this upgrade cost 100 dollars after selling my old setup so it was worth it.

[bulk88]

Games will use 2 cpus. It is just all the graphics rendaring has to be done on one. So AI, I/O, Network, Sound will all be done on another CPU. If you want truly check. this is for win2k, open taks manager, proceses tab-view-select collum, and check "tread count" in the right colum. Now start up the game, and Alt-Tab out of it back into windows, go to windows task manager and look on the processes tab, if your game has a higher number higher than 1, it will distribute work over the processors.

As for graphics, I belive the Quake 3 engine is the only one that can take advantage of SMP for the purpose of graphics. But there is one limitation. It requires your video card drivers to be SMP compatible, so it works basically on a video card by video card basis (check yourself).

[SickBoy]

The Quake 3 engine SMP support is flakey at best, I've tried it. I only saw like a 10 FPS gain when enabling r_smp and that was with my Duron 1.2's (before I upgraded to dual XP 1700's).

It's an old game engine so a fast single will do more for it. Not to say you -can't- play games on SMP systems, but if FPS is what you're after you might want to look elsewhere.

[JimmyK]

I ahve to agree, if ur a str8 hard core gamer and like bragging or having that 170 FPS instead of the 160 then YES go with single processor P4, but if you liek to even multitask a lil bit, IE burning DVD movies and playing video games for starters then I implore you to get a SMP system.

Bottom line you wont notice that extra 10fps but it does give you bragging rights, BUT you will notice how amazingly the computer handles even basic multitaskign such as burning a dvd and playing unreal tournament, and while doing all that you can have your email client open kazaa downloading and not even the slightest HICCUP.

above thats just for basic users then when it comes to power users with HIGH end multitasking IE ripping/encoding/decrypting dont even get me started. :)

[BioNiKaL]

thanks alot guys i think i'll go with a 2.4 athlon xp instead of mp's