dual vs. single processor

[jjohn143]

I currently have a pII 450 and would like to upgrade to a faster processor, but it is cheaper to buy a dual processor motherboard and an additional pII 450 than to upgrade to a pIII 550 or 600. is this good reasoning? what performance gains will I see over a single pII thanx in advance

[800XL]

To see anything at all, you will need to run a dual capable OS such as Windows NT, BeOS, or Linux. Windows 98 has no support at all for dual CPUs. With NT, you will likely only see gains if you multitask a lot. Most consumer apps (MS Office, etc) are not written to take advantage of dual CPUs so you only see a difference when the OS can "assign" processor affinity to one CPU or the other with multiple apps.

The other alternative is to buy a Guaranteed 550Mhz overclocking Celeron 366. It will be faster than your 450Mhz PII and much cheaper than a PIII. You will miss out on SSE (new code for the PIII) optimized proggies and games, but the difference would not be really huge. You could probably sell the P2 450Mhz for more than the cost of the Celeron without too much trouble.

[SoopaStar]

To add to 800xls' statement: The second processor isn't workin in unison with the first one. It acts more as a backup processor. When the load on the first one becomes to great, the second one kicks in more or less.

--SS--

[Si]

I Agree, two or more processors is totally pointless unless you have a multiprocessor O/S. It would be advantageous to have multiple processors on say a heavy loaded NTserver, but as far as workstations there really isn't the commercial software out there to utilise such configuration.

[bdog]

check out this link http://www.hardocp.com/articles/smp/gadfly_smp/smp_pg1.html They claim dual processors help in ALL applications under NT. What do you think of this?

[CMonster]

Thanks bdog,

That article sums it up rather well, thanks for the link and dispelling the hearsay. I always knew that even Microsoft could not be so stupid as to just let a second CPU sit there idle.