|
Number one, the previous post is correct that HyperThreading is not the same as SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing).
As for the other post about 2 CPUs not being worth it... well obviously it depends. Of course running 2 CPUs can be pretty expensive and at the end of the day it is still using the same system memory and peripherals so you will see a dramatic performance hit when both procs want to access the same bus. SMP computing is a reality that works amazingly well when you have full OS support (OS X has great SMP support which is why Apple sells so many dual processor systems, that and they were stuck with those slow Motorolla chips... but I am straying from the topic). The first thing is to realize that 2 CPUs is not going to double your performance, and a lot of the time it will not come very close to doing that. To see why think about what the CPU actually is doing. Essentially it is doing some operation (simple arithmatic, a load or store) and if you have 2 CPUs (or more) you can devide the work among them. The problem comes when you cannot split the work in half because the second half of the problem depends on the first and thus cannot be computed until the first finishes. So then you are sitting there with 2 CPUs but only one is doing any work because the other is waiting for the firsts result. All is not lost however because on modern computers are doing a whole lot more then just one program at a time, so even if CPU A is trying to devide a huge number, CPU B can still do other operationgs that let you browse the web or whatever.
While good multiprocessor support may help when running SMP, it really comes down to how well the OS supports it. I must admit that I have very limited experience with SMP on Windows. I saw some friend of my younger brother had a dual proc Athlon MP with Windows XP and it was not doing a very good job of balancing the load, but it is very possible that he was using a particularly SMP unfriendly app at the time (even though from myu discussion earlier I believe that an OS should be able to sold these issues unless there are resource conflicts).
Whoa, so that was way more then I was planning on writting. My NyQuil is really kicking in and I have no idea if this makes sense. In the end I would say find out if people using the same apps on the same OS experience a big performance boost with multiple processors, otherwise I am inclined to agree with the previous poster concerning better things to spend your green on.
___________________
"You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are." - Colonel Adolphus Busch
Major Johnson - February Progressive Mix
Download Other Mixes
|
