well after listening to all of your praise towards dual CPU systems, i thought id try one out. so a few questions when buying one:
-are athlonMP, and opterons the only AMDs i can use?
-will any opteron work, or do they come in a special dual cpu make
-do both cpus have to be the same speed
-is there any extra setup i need to make winows processes run on the second CPU leaving the first to gaming?

I, for one, never praised them. I don't think that there that much better than a single and many benchmark tests prove that. True they are somewhat better in certain areas but overall I wouldn't pay the extra for them.

Multiple processors are best on Servers when you want to run Background programs like Mail Servers abd maybe even Database servers (1 processor serving the database, while the other deals with backing up the database)

The modern OS systems are programmed to have as much Idle time as possible. There is a programmed loop that runs to calculate how used the CPU. If the CPU isn't in use [Idle] then it can execute programs (At least this was the way until Multithreading beds in).

A Dual or higher number of processor's in a computer will mean that there is always guaranteed Idle time if the administrator so chooses to configure it that way.

well after listening to all of your praise towards dual CPU systems, i thought id try one out. so a few questions when buying one:
-are athlonMP, and opterons the only AMDs i can use?
-will any opteron work, or do they come in a special dual cpu make
-do both cpus have to be the same speed
-is there any extra setup i need to make winows processes run on the second CPU leaving the first to gaming?


Apple G5 Dual Processor Systems use the IBM 970 PPC 64 bit Processors. http://www.apple.com/powermac/ These Systems Have no Spyware or Viruses (They won't RUN on IBM Processors) and are Faster than a 1993 $7 Million SGI/CRAY C916 Supercomputer. My (last years Model) Dual 2 Gigahertz 64 Bit Processor System Does 16 GigaFLOPS! That's FASTER than System #9 on this List http://www.top500.org/list/1993/06/ And they come with All the Applications you need Installed. http://www.apple.com/ilife/ A 64 Bit Operating System comes with the Dual 64 Bit CPU Hardware. http://www.apple.com/macosx/ FAST, Reliable, No Viruses, Easy to Use. Each of the dual-processor Power Mac G5 models offers lightning-fast performance, built on G5 processors running at up to 2.7GHz. A 64-bit processor with two double-precision floating-point units, two integer units and support for symmetric multiprocessing, the G5 combines an optimized Velocity Engine with a superscalar, super-pipelined execution core that can execute more than 200 simultaneous in-flight instructions. This high-bandwidth core has over 12 discrete functional units that process massive amounts of instructions in parallel. :D I'd bet Faster than 20 GigaFLOPS!

Stryder,

Modern O.S.'s are designed to utilize the Idle Time (with usage of context switching) and minimize the same, ergo to say that they are built on idea to have as much as idle time as possible would be a gross mistake,wouldnt it?

thanks.

Zion,
As you know Idle time basically just defines when the system has enough resources available to run more processes. If your CPU has no spare Idletime then it won't be able to deal with any more processes or failing that it will deal with them but make everything run at a crawl.

You are right about Modern OS's being built to utilise Idletime, in fact most C++ projects (Especially 3D Engines) involve the usage of idletime. Only the earlier OS's didn't have it so built into the framework.

In fact Idle time is important on an OS because it's a Platform which other programs run on. If the OS had no Idletime then you would not be able to run programs on/with it.

upside: The dual G5 2.7Ghz machines are faaast.
downside: The dual-core Opterons are faaaster.
downside: Apple just anounced their transition to x86 during the 2006-2007 time frame, which will result in a year and a half lull in software development as everything gets switched over. Once OSX and its applications are running smoothly on x86 (in about two years), assuming Apple hasn't turned into a BeOS-like OS vendor, I will be able to recommend OSX as an alternative to windows again.
For now, I can't tell people to buy machines which are going to be treated like second class citizens by developers three years from now.

I praise dual-CPU systems overall, because for 1.25x the price of a single-CPU machine, you effectively double the life span of the machine.

I have a dual 500mhz G4 tower I still use today (though it is getting long in the tooth), that would have been in the trash years ago had it been a single 500mhz machine.

Dual processors rigs cannot produce double the CPU power, due to overhead and innefeciency of executing scaler code (on step at a time, in order) in a parrallel fasion.
However, if you multitask alot, and have a large number of applications and/or files open at once, the overall resposiveness of the machine will be much better on a dual-proc machine.
This will really help as the machine ages - the feeling of "waiting for the machine" is much lessened when you have a proc free to handle I/O while the other chugs away on some heavy task.

You will notice 0 benefit in some applications - those that are not built "threaded", or able to be divided up into little sub-parts for execution on the CPU. Things like Games, etc will show litte to no advantage from a multi-CPU machine.

With the advent of the new 64 bit OS we won't have problems as you describe for 64 apps can run at the same time with a single processor that is 64 bit ready. Eventually everything comes to the end of its life and newer stuff comes online for us to buy to keep up with techonology in the computer areas. That's why every 5 years its good to rebuild what you have with all new equipment for there are allot of improvements in those 5 years.

I've heard Itanium won't be the Intel Processor of Choice. Any Idea what 64 bit Intel Processor they have in Mind? Or are they Going to Cook up a New Design with Intel (Hopefully with a Short Pipeline [5 - 8 Stages Max]).

Sea Mac, I assume you mean for Apple. No Itanium is most certainly NOT going to do much of anything in the near future.
For now, at least, Apple is going to be supporting IA-32; IA-64 bit goodness in a mac will arrive soon enough, maybe even by the time retail hardware ships; Lunix and Windows already support both Intel's IA-64 and AMD's x86-64 extentions.

The chances of Intel custom fabbing a short-pipelined chip just for Apple are pretty much 0. Edit: While the longer pipeline of the Pentium Line (up to 39 in the NetBurst P4) does mean more harsh pentalties for branch misprediction, the significant improvement of branch prediction hardware has made this much less of an issue in real-world performance. The G5 has a 16->21 stage pipeline!! (integer & floating point, respectively)
The Pentium-M and its offspring are the most likely canidates - from a geek perspective, they are designed fairly well. Much more elegant than the P4's, and as powerful.

Check here for more info on the Macintel topic.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=46853



Cosmictraveler: I'm not following. Are you saying that 64bit OS's somehow allow applications to avoid threading while maintaining simultanious processing? Or are you responding to a different post?

Wow! Far Out: Thank you very Much!! I'll read those links for sure.