Dual Xeon? Dual TBird/Duron? Dual ANYTHING?

[KaMiKaZi]

I was wondering what processors supported dual procs. Please help. Also, how fast would these be, and how much can they be overclocked?

[KaMiKaZi]

i want to save money, but i also want it to be fast...plz help

[Reddywing]

Almost all Intel procs (but not P!!! cA2) will do SMP. AMD will have dual processor capability soon. But don't do it. You know you will need NT or Win2000 don't you ? Also it is unlikely that many ( or any ) programs you normally use will take advantage of the second processor. I have two dual proc machines because each one can process two SETI units at once. If you do not have some similar need, do not get a dual machine. It is a waste of money.

Instead, buy a medium fast Intel (700 to 800) P!!! with a quality motherboard and good ram. With a good heatsink you will have some overclocking potential.

Any AMD Duron or T-bird in the upper ranges ( you don't have to go all the way to 1.2 gig for good speed) will stomp the P!!!.

The bottom line is the words "budget" and "dual" can't be used in the same sentence when talking computers. Do your research. Good luck.

[KaMiKaZi]

I have Win2K, so that isn't a problem, but when will AMD support dual procs? I am looking to buy within 2 months.

[Tim-]

If you are considering a dual cpu board to gain more speed, it really isn't going to be a big improvement. As indicated in the other post, without software that is SMP aware, the increase is only around 5-10% maximum. The second cpu does only housekeeping chores with almost all software available at the moment.

In the applications that are SMP aware the increase will be up to 50%, which is worthwhile. Outside of the higher dollar CAD, graphic arts, video editing, 3D rendering, and database software there is almost none that will use the 2nd processor.

However, to feed dual processors, you will need a premium power supply, LOTS of case cooling, and twice the ram to really be worthwhile. Then throw in the expensive software for specific applications, and the costs are getting up there.

For 99% of what you do (unless you do a lot of the things listed above) you will get much better performance for less money with a T-Bird running at 1.1-1.2GHz and save a LOT of bucks doing it.

[wild_andy_c]

Dual P3 cB0 or cC0's in a Via 694 dual motherboard is the cost effective / bang for buck way to go. Theres a great new motherboard from ASUS - a dual cpu version of the CUV4X out that does a great job of overclocking dual P3's.

Dual Socket A is only being BETA'd on the AMD760MP chipset, Via have cacked it for the time being, ALi are out of it and SiS need not start to think about it.

On the intel side of SMP - you have the i815e (yes the 815 can do SMP contrary to many peoples popular belief), 440BX, 440GX, i820, i840 and 694x dual. That's a whole lot of chipsets, and obviously a whole lotta motherboards.

There is only presently one real solution, but this may change.

[SP]

Someone said earlier that almost all Intel processors support smp. This is true. However, it should also be mentioned that celeron 2 processors will NOT support smp. I just thought I'd mention this because alot of people make the mistake of assuming they will. Original celeons support smp, but the newer celeron 2s do not provide the appropriate signals to support an smp configuration.

It is true that your applications won't individually benefit from a multiprocessor system unless they are well threaded and the work load of the application is well balance across multiple threads. The way it works is an OS that supports multiprocessing executes separate threads on each CPU. Therefore for an individual application to run faster it must consist of multiple threads and each of those threads must carry a relatively equal amount of the workload. Also, the threads need to not be dependant upon each other. That is if one thread has to stop executing to wait on the results from another thread any gain that would have been achieve would be lost. Another thing is that since both cpus share the same memory if one has to access memory at the same time as the other one of them will have to wait. So, tasks that access memory alot or perform lots of input and output may not benfit much either. So, as you can see optimizing an application to take advantage of multiprocessing is not always easy to do. Some tasks just don't lend themselves well to these kinds of optimizations. These are some of the reasons why the majority of applications don't substantially benefit from multiprocessing and why in some cases it might be very difficult and even impossible for the programmers who write these applications to make them take advantage of multiprocessing even if they wanted to do so.

However, while it's true that individual applications may not run faster unless they are optimized to take advantage of multiprocessing, it is true that a multiprocessor machine will multitask much better than a single CPU system. If you are a power user who runs multiple CPU intensive applications concurrently then SMP will make your system feel much faster and much more responsive. Remember how I said different threads run on different processors. Well, that means that different processes can be running concurrently on each processor. Now, in order to see benefit here the applications that are running concurrently must be CPU intensive and much not be input/output bound or bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. Running 2 or more applications that use very few cpu cycles concurrently would work just as well on a single CPU system.



Anyway, if your really interested in SMP check out www.2cpu.com It's the best site for SMP.

[The Master]

I just gotta tell ya all, when I bought my Bp6 with the dual cel500, it was the best deal of my life.
SMP operation is very useful even when using regular applications too.
For instance: If at a gathering like Dreamhack of whatever, you'll most definately will be running a FTP server or perhapse burning your warez CD's or something. With dual proc, you can do many things at once like burning, surfing and listening to yer mp3 at once. On regular single proc mobos you (almost) always have to remain idle when burning and such.

And when it comes to mentioning "budget" and "Dual" in the same sentance...
A Bp6 mobo costs about 50$ (in sweden) and the processors costs about 70$+ each, if it's PPGA you want. The PPGA sockets on the Mobo can be converted with the s370 powerleap adapter to FC-PGA format and still be able to run Dual P3 (see BP6.com for details).
With the converter it can handle: Cel2 single and P3 dual and single (FC-PGA)
Without the converter: Cel-One Dual and single (PPGA)

For those Non-Belivers put there: Check out bp6.com's benchmark results!!!!!!