[Mr Snub]

I am just getting into the custom built/ overclocking scene and i want to know what use comes of an smp
benefits?
drawbacks?
and any opinions on amd dual rigs( I have heard of some incompatibility)

[OKCFUNKY]

read around in the forums. Main drawback is limited support by programs. Biggest advantage that duallies will always have is the ability to multitask like youve never done before.
You should theoretically be able to run a graphically intense game, and edit videos and other stuff at the same time. On a uni proc, that is impossible to practically achieve. I see it as interesting to get into duallies. There is the looming advent of the hammers... and there are current xp dual capabilities. Biggest drawback on Intel boards are the cost, but they do seem to suffer the memory drawback amd duals suffer. There are some little incompatabilities across all dual boards, whehter amd or intel. The game will change when hammers arrive. I will be interested in how all that work. Im currently holding off every upgrade to get dual opterons(sledgehammers), since the hammer series has huge bandwidth gains that are just phenominal. Some report from the Intel side show that they are wanting a uniproc that functions like a dual proc( that will inevitably have severe flaws, i don't think it will be able to crunch more than a true dual proc) hope that helps in any way possible.

[nipster]

having been a smp freak for about 4 years now, i can say its great, but not without its drawbacks. When i first statred, the only OS that you could use was windows NT 4, which for me meant not much gaming, and limited hardware support. So i ended up dual booting to win 98 when i needed to use my:
1. scanner
2. modem (no modem drivers for my modem under nt4)
3. joystick

or to play most games i played at the time

Since windows 2000 was released, this has become a non-issue and 98 got the boot

Drawbacks?

1. more heat
2. more noise
3. bigger case needed
4. more expensive motherboards + one more processor to buy
5. possibly larger power supply needed
6. most sound cards dont work properly in a 2 CPU machine due to drivers not taking affinity to one processor, its complicated
7. no win 9x OS support for 2 cpu machines (it works, but you waste a processor)
8. most apps are not multithreaded and dont take full advantage of SMP, but it reduces your OS overhead, so there is some inherent advantages

That said, i personally dont like the AMD MP platform, it is riddled with bugs and incompatibilities, all one needs to do is check the www.2cpu.com forum for a gague of the problems with these things. Intel has been doing this a long time and i never had any issues with intel dual cpu systems at all. however they are more expensive. But you get what you pay for and if you ask me, its a superior platform

[jasonlylevene]

I thought I'd add another dual AMD point here.

Dual AMD systems are a "new" thing. There's only one dual chipset, essentially (well, there's two, the AMD MP and AMD MPX, and while they're two sets, they're both from AMD, and have the same success/failures between them).

The ASUS dual AMD spawned huge threads on 2cpu.com, and still another board with problems is the Gigabyte.

However, many users have dual AMD boards that are stable, particularly the recent Tyan and early MSI K7D (the new red one has an odd BIOS problem that's frying CPU's with 2.8v, but that should be fixed with a bios update).

The dual AMD is a very cost effective solution, and will probably become even cheaper when the next wave of AMD chips is released. With some care, it does still deserve a place on your list of options.

I'm retiring a dual P2 333 that served well for years, and I've built a number of Tyan based dual AMD and a host of SuperMicro based dual P3 boards for clients. My money will go to dual AMD, but if you aren't willing to tweak and fix, either stay with single CPU amd, or go with Intel. Watch, though, because the next wave of AMD chips may change things drastically, as OKCFUNKY points out.

[diehrd]

I say a Dual AMD !

A P-4 Single system may have good memory bandwidth but will bog down on processing !

Go to this link read it and decide what you will ...AMD duals have come a long way in a short time and for the investment there is no other way to get so much pure processing power.............



http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000321

[Carbon*DEA]

Just testing out my Sig...sorry

[lonewolf1983]

the advantages of a dual system lie in what your running with it
very handy with SMP apps and things like video encoding and running seti/folding.
downsides are listed above nicely.

amd systems can have incompatibilities but these are being worked out, and if you are going to SMP with new parts, Intels offerings are too expensive and also suffer some problems.

the bottom line in buying a dual system is that a dual cpu system wont be twice as fast, but will let you do twice as much

[rogerdugans]

I'm not going to restate anything thats already been said, but I do have an example for you:

I've got a water-cooled xp1700 that hits 1.7ghz pretty easy, but I also have a Dual P3 1ghz VP6 (which I did a bit of physical damage to: will run as server fine still, but locks up when used as a workstation!?)

Before I messed up the VP6 it was my workstation: slower on the absolute benchmarks, but real-use performance it was the fastest machine I had! The only way I could get it to open a program as slowly as a single cpu pc, was to have 2 instances of Seti crunching, burn a 600mb cd, and defrag a drive.

Yes, they are more expensive, a lot of software can't take full advantage of them, but they are the balls.

[Carbon*DEA]

I also have a Dual and they kick butt when ur doing alot of stuff simotainosly (exscuse my bad spelling lol)

At a Lan party i had 4 guys ripping me at full load and i was wathcing a Div-x movie and both the cpu´s where only at 80% .

btw. it´s Asus P3C-D with 384MB RDram and 2 PIII800EB's CPU.
The most stable system i´ve had .

[explorer]

A recommendation that I have for you is to not buy a new dual system, they are fantastically expensive. Instead get an old system and convert it to a dual system. I converted my old p3 733 into a dual 733@914 by buying a 30$ moteboard(Asus p3c-d on ebay) and a 50$ proc (p3 733 on ebay). My system does everything i need it to, maya, file server, dhcp server, photoshop . . . and I use my single xp 1600+ for games, in a year or two the xp will become my dual and I will get a new single proc system. It is all one big cycle.

[TS Ice]

I want to to run dual CPU's to kill the amount i am pushing from myone.
It asbeen runing really hot lately and I am only running one thing that the moment.

Plz tell me how to get this under control
I have gotten a bigger cooling fan but it is still as hot as ever

[Carbon*DEA]

How is the airflow in the case u have?. U might need a new case or some fans in the case m8 .

I got my Dual board in my new Chieftech Dragon Fulltower and with 2 CPU´s and 5 Harddrives ( all scsi ) and 2 CDroms and the board temp is only 29c.
I got 6 Fans in that mother of a case so i have enough of airflow .
1 CPU with standard cooler is 40c and nr. 2 CPU with Golden Orb cooler is 35c.
Could also be bad cooler paste on the core´s m8. Use Silver 3...that rocks.

[Tecumseh]

I've been running dual P3 servers for a couple of years now.
Linux and M$ W2K are both stable. I run the servers 24/7
except in thunder storms...Even with big UPSes a direct
lightning hit could be costly.

The only thing I've had to do was replace the 300 watt PSUs
on all servers with 350 Watt PSUs. The olds one never exactly
failed but started "singing."

I've anticipated dual AMDs for a long time. Forget it until
at least Fall of 2003.

Well, is it worth it? I all depends on the apps you want to run.
For all the guys running Seti and Folding and RC5-64 it
takes up a lot less room and leaves compute power for
everyday stuff.

[Ice_Gargoylle]

one of the most important things i have read about dual amd is to get MP cpu's. XP's can be hit or miss.
Another thing is to look around like Mr Snub said is to search around in other forums to see what is happening with other hardware, mobo, sound, graphix, and especially Memory. Decide what you want the main reason for rig is and model your components around that specific rerason.

[DS]

I am not brand loyal,get what your pocket book will support. Duallies are great multi taskers. You can have them running the cpu's @ 100% load, listen to a CD and surf the web at the same time.

[Kingslayer]

Lack of program support, games, limited operating systems.......

That what you hear from the negative side.

Let me give you the positive side.

Go buy a dual system. Run the fastest chips you can on it. Even if the program or game doesn't support duals, you have plenty of power from one CPU to do just about anything anyways.

Kind of like a drag race....You're already whooping the guy, but let's hit the nitrous and really put him to shame. Why? Because you can.

[donny_paycheck]

Originally posted by Kingslayer
Go buy a dual system. Run the fastest chips you can on it. Even if the program or game doesn't support duals, you have plenty of power from one CPU to do just about anything anyways.

That's it right there. Possibly not as fast, but much more robust. It'll go one speed through everything, whether you're playing a MP3 or playing a MP3, RTCW, downloading a file and folding/crunching a WU.

A rough analogy is to trucks. A pickup with dual sets of rear wheels goes no faster than a standard pickup. Sometimes it even goes a tad slower. But load each truck up with 2000 pounds of sandbags and then see who slows down faster.

[Kingslayer]

Well that all depends if you throw the sandbags out the back or out the front to stop......

Sorry....couldnt resist.