Please explain Dual Processor MoBo's

[Ecniv]

Basically, it does mean 4gh, only a bit differnt

In order for you to get 4ghz potential from a dual proccessor board, the application has to be whats called "Multi-Threaded"

This is a program that is aware of the dual proccessor setup and can take advantage of it. Your Operating system will if it is win 2k or higher, or any version of Linux.

And many high end graphical programs and video editing, etc do as well.

Biggest downfall is that you wont notice "much" of a difference in gaming.

 

[Martin]

The only way gaming will benefit from multiple processors is if the developer coded the game to take advantage of it, and otherwise, the game will be unable to recognize the additional processors after the first.

 

[Ecniv]

Exactly what I meant by the program being "Multithreaded"

 

[Ecniv]

That is probably your best bet, chances of many multithreaded games are slim, because there are so few people gaming with dual CPU's

 

[h4x0r]

I have a Dual Athlon MP 2000+ (1.6 Ghz) right now.
and no, it doesnt make 3.2 Ghz speed. But gives a whole lot of power, in todays standards.

Gamers will only benifit out of Dual Processor is if they manage to find a game that supports dual processors which i cant think of.

The only nice thing about dual and gaming is, u can assign explorer.exe and other programs u are curruntly running to one processor and the game only for another processor (which I do most of the time) and thats the only way I found to get the best out of games out of a Dual Athlon. (U gotta have Win 2k or XP pro to be able to assign each process to seperate processor)

To run dual, u also need to have processors that support Dual. Like Athlon MP. Athlon XP is only single processor. Or if ure a intel guy, try the athlon XEON.

 

[Ecniv]

LOL, athlon Xeon by intel huh? thats a new one in my book.

 

[Martin]

In terms of Folding though, a Quad-Xeon would be wiped out by a dual Athlon MP

 

[Ecniv]

hmm, 4 procs vs. 2 procs? yea I can see the winner there.

However, when a Dual Athlon mp is put agains a dual Xeon of the same speed, the athon always whoops.

 

[h4x0r]

Sorry, I meant Intel Xeon, not Athlon XEON

 

[sumando]

I have an older dual machine at work. I run high-end scientific software on it (finite difference code). The nice thing is I still have a cpu available to run office software, snoop progress on simulations etc. with a full cpu available.

This architecture is nothing like supercomputer architecture. Best implementation I ever saw was a Convex C220 I bought back in 1990. It ran their own flavor of Unix. The cool thing was that the two CPU's had a "look ahead" feature that allowed both processors to evaluate the instruction queue and literally work hand over hand on a single process without any special coding or compiler strategy. It was awesome. HP bought them out, threw away everything they didn't want and became the big success they are now(!).