newbie question about dual cpu's/computers

[MrBaseball]

What the heck are they? If you have a dual p3 700 for example, does that mean you have two p3 700 cpu's in one computer? if someone can answer me, that would be great. Thank.

[Sterling_Aug]

Yep. It is like having two computers in one box. I have 3 dual systems at home and they ROCK!

[MrBaseball]

Thats sweet. What would be some advantages to having a dual system? Would it be much faster? Also, how exactly would 2 cpu's fit on one board? or do you have to have 2 mobo's for somthing like that?

[Szech]

In order to have dual processors, you need a motherboard that supports it. IOW, it will have two sockets for two processors. In addition to having a compatible motherboard, you need an operating system that supports dual processors (i.e. Win NT, Win 2000). You will really only see performance gains in programs that support multi-threading such as Photoshop, and Quake 3. If programs don't support it, you won't see much gain. But performance aside, multi-tasking is much smoother with dual processors. You can run a lot more programs at the same time without the loss of performance you have with a single processor. You can burn CDs and still use your computer, for instance. I used my friend's dual 466 Celeron system, and it's NICE.