Complete n00b...

I'm interested on building a duallie - but have absoulutly NO experience in the subject.

Primary use will be gaming, and web surfing. (I'm not doing anything like Seti/Folding/Prime95 at the moment).

I am keen to try either an Intel or AMD! (I must be a rare breed in that sense)


Finally, what sort of cooling arrangements should I make? Will watercooling be a necessity? Or could I get away with an air-cooling solution?


ANY help is appreciated - even if it's just a link!! (N.B. Intel vs. AMD wars aren't considered help in this case!)

Thanks in advance!

There is no advantage in using a dual over a single in the applications you mention here.

Henry Rollins II said:

There is no advantage in using a dual over a single in the applications you mention here.

Click to expand...

..unless you wish to do both at once

if you DO want a dual (which you probably dont need for these things) then AMD duals are a lot cheaper than Intel ones. I'm talking XP/MP vs Xeon here.

David

I'm with Henry on this one. If you're not doing DC projects and all you do is surf and game, go with a single CPU system.

I'm a Folder and I'm also a pretty rabid multitasker, and that's where a dual system shines. Multithreaded apps also run extremely well on dual CPU systems, but not a lot are right now.

Other things that duals do well are media encoding and graphical rendering. And obviously, serving things like files, HTML, SQL, etc.

The thing is... a dual CPU system is not going to seem like a very economical solution if all you're doing is gaming. Dual CPU systems are expensive when compared with a single CPU solution of about the same MHz. When you fire up UT2K3 or (insert favorite game here) and you're not getting any better framerate than you would on an equivalent single CPU system (or potentially a worse framerate) you're going to be pretty mad that you spend $300 top $400 more for an underdog performer.

Plus duals don't overclock as well.

SO I would reevaluate your desire for a dual system before spending the money. A while back, nihili had a suggestion for people interested in SMP to try a cheap SMP system, such as a PII or early PIII generation system, and see how it performs. If you like how these systems perform, SMP may be for you.

sb

You can burn CD´s and do something else at the same time with duals. IMHO the best feature of a dual.

Yeah, duals are great for multitasking, but frames per second in games will be slightly lower.

I love duals, however, and I use one for gaming. It is a great machine. The best thing is, I can do many things at once, without dragging the system down.

If you want to know if it's for you, I have one suggestion. Read these forums. Read all the stickies in this forum, then read through all the posts in the last month. If there is one thing I can't stress enough, it's do lots of research before spending money.

BTW, a dual is going to require a more expensive motherboard (probably $200), two CPU's and heatsinks, preferably Registered RAM (slightly more expensive than regular RAM), a decent case (preferably with at least two intake and two exhaust fans), a High Power PSU (preferably 500 Watts or more).

All in all, probably $200-300 more than a single CPU system.

iamthegreatest said:

I'm interested on building a duallie - but have absoulutly NO experience in the subject.

Primary use will be gaming, and web surfing. (I'm not doing anything like Seti/Folding/Prime95 at the moment).

I am keen to try either an Intel or AMD! (I must be a rare breed in that sense)


Finally, what sort of cooling arrangements should I make? Will watercooling be a necessity? Or could I get away with an air-cooling solution?


ANY help is appreciated - even if it's just a link!! (N.B. Intel vs. AMD wars aren't considered help in this case!)

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

1) TRY AMD, not intel. Intel dual solutions are WAY, WAY more expensive. IF you get into hardcore multi tasking stuff, then you can look into the xeons / hyperthreading / amd VS intel debate. A Dual intel board alone costs like $500, you can get an amd board AND two procs for less than the cost of a dual xeon motherboard.

2) Air cooling will be just fine, you abolutely do NOT need watercooling. Now, if you're planning to volt mod your board and crank your amd CPU voltages up over 2 volts, well, then you may want to water cool, just like in a single CPU situation.

3) If you have set up single CPU systems, the dual system set up is just about the same, should be easy.

4) IF you are comfortable modding a chip, the normal amd XP chips can easily be modded to work in SMP. Its similar to the "multi unlock" but you only need to connect ONE bridge (last L5 if I remember, check the sticky). This is cool, because you can try SMP with just 2 $50 amd 1600XP. AFTER you fall madly in love with the stability and multitasking abilities, then you can get faster procs.

5) I recomend the MSI K7D amd board, it has oced very well and been great stable for me. Other boards have their proponets as well. In general, dual = more stable, easy to do many things at once, but are slower than same speed single CPUs for single tasks.

Good luck, I love duals.

im with the majority of the other guys here....
Games and websurfing a fast single cpu rig (wether AMD or intel) is going to suit your needs better, and save you some money to throw into other areas, such as gfx card,monitor, hdd's.

Thanks!

I'll bear that advice in mind!

ImG

Now for me to throw in my 2 coppers worth.
I was a single system user for years and loved it when I got the newer setups. Wooo hoooo! Runs better with everything I do.
But, I decided to take the plung as well.
I did the same as you are, asking about it and if it would be worth it blah blah.
Well I decided that it would be worth a shot. So, I took it.
Im running a Tyan Tiger MPX board with dual 1.3 durons.
Its freakin outstanding!!!
Granted, I dont actually do what most of these folks do, run multi apps and all that. But I can say I have noticed a huge difference.
For me, I run at one time at a consistent basis.
Yahoo mess
AIM
Opera
winamp or TV card.
F@H x 2
Thats typical of what I have going. Now, once I go beyond that on a single system, I start to feel lag once I start up the many apps I play with day in day out.
Gif Animator 5
Frontpage
ICQ if I decide to install it
PSP
Photoshop
Explorer
Netscape sometimes
Media player
cheeta chat
IRC if I install it
I know Im missing tons of other apps I use on a varied basis, but I think that gets the point out.
None of these can really "use" a dual system, but when I do all that on a single and it lags, and doesnt on a dual, well its a seller for me!
Well gotta get to work or Im sure Id babble more.

Thanx again!

One other thing:

I read in one of the Stickies that I'd need either NT4, Win 2k, XP pro, or a Linux to make the full use of SMP.
Supposing I installed Win98, would it just not run, or would one proc be idle all the time? What would happen?

It's just that I haven't got any of the aforementioned OSes (money=sparse at the moment)

ImG

iamthegreatest said:

Thanx again!

One other thing:

I read in one of the Stickies that I'd need either NT4, Win 2k, XP pro, or a Linux to make the full use of SMP.
Supposing I installed Win98, would it just not run, or would one proc be idle all the time? What would happen?

It's just that I haven't got any of the aforementioned OSes (money=sparse at the moment)

ImG

Click to expand...

98 would only see and use one CPU. Nothing horrendous, but defies the point of a dual CPU system.

David

I dual boot 98 and XP because I have a program I love that only runs on 98. It's worth having around, and if you wanted to do your first install using 98, that's fine. You can always install 2K or XP on another partition later, then you'll be able to dual-boot.

BTW, if you ever want to dual boot 98 and anything else, you have to install 98 first.

iamthegreatest said:

Thanx again!

One other thing:

I read in one of the Stickies that I'd need either NT4, Win 2k, XP pro, or a Linux to make the full use of SMP.
Supposing I installed Win98, would it just not run, or would one proc be idle all the time? What would happen?

It's just that I haven't got any of the aforementioned OSes (money=sparse at the moment)

ImG

Click to expand...

Linux is FREE, Linux is FREE .....

BUT, ya, uh ... not as good for games, sorry to say. If you're a student, I think winXP can be had for real cheap.

Yaay! Student discount here we go!

Linux is OK for games if you use the following:
http://www.winehq.org http://www.transgaming.com

with the following:
http://www.frankscorner.org/wine/

Anyway, You SHOULD KNOW SOMETHING FIRST:
check out the specs on the game engines you play with:
if they only support single CPUs, they will actually run a little SLOWER with dual CPUs. If you run Q3 or RtCW, or some others which support SMP you will run maybe 30%-50% faster than 1CPU.

You ought to try out AMD SMP's simply because of cost.

Linux is great for a few games ie: Quake 1, 2, 3, RtCW, and UT2003, which actually have Linux versions for total compatibility. Nvidia is now releasing Linux drivers with every single driver release in the future. Also some great games will probably be made with this engine:

http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/ a free OPEN SOURCE game engine, JUST ASKING TO BE MODDED.

--dave