Reduced Performance Than 1X?

[Foxie3a]

I know nothing about SMP, and I don't want to either, but I hear that you get reduced performance in tasks that are only one processor enabled...why is this?

[FunkDaMonkMan]

That's not extally true, because 99% of the time you are not running JUST one program. There is always something on the background. This slowdown that you hear about occurs in games, and its is because of the greater overhead on the memory bus. Having two processors accessing it, slows things down. However, if you have a few programs running in the background (anti-virus, firewall, chat) single cpu programs can run faster than on a single cpu system.

[Foxie3a]

thank you..one post cleared things up..amazing.. :)

[dropadrop]

I don't think this should be such an issue with dual opteron motherbords as part of them have a memory buss for both processors.

One thing to take into consideration is that single processor motherboards are released alot more frequently then dual processor motherboards. They are also more geared for "max performance".

[Foxie3a]

yeah, I was just wondering, I am not actually interested in getting another one, I have my P3C-D, and that's all I need.. :)