Are dual CPU systems worth it?

[Link19]

Do you think dual CPU systems are worth it for the extra cost? Does a dual CPU system work the same way as a single Pentium 4 CPU system with hyper threading enabled, with the only difference being two logical CPUs as opposed to two physical CPUs? I thought they worked the same with the only difference being one is logical dual CPUs and one is physical dual CPUs. But I have heard that some drivers won't work properly with dual CPU systems, but they work fine with hyper threading systems? Well, why would that be if they work essentially the same way excpet that hyper threading is like logical dual CPUs, and a dual CPU motherboard has dual CPUs. I mean they are both SMP? Does having dual physical CPUs give a big performance increase over a single hyper threading Pentium 4 system?

And if you were to go the Athlon 64 route, you wouldn't be able to get any SMP without buying an AMD dual CPU motherboard, and two Athlon 64 CPUs because AMD CPUs don't have anything like hyper threading. Would it be worth going a dual Athlon 64 system if you were going to put together a whole new computer? Would there be any disadvanatge to it besides cost? And is hyper threading really work the same way as two physical CPUs? ANother words, will any applications that benifit from hyper threading, benifit just as much or even more from two physical CPUs? And will any device drivers that work fine with hyper threading, also work fine with two physical CPUs? Basically, any differences in how they work vs compatibility between hyper threading and dual physical CPUs?

 

[SrGuapo]

A dual CPU setup will really only be useful in server or high end parallel computing machine. If you are gaming, a single CPU will give better performance at a cheaper price.

A dual CPU system has latencies when the two chips have to communicxate with each other that will actualy make any single threaded apps (games) run slower.

Hyper threading is different than multi-CPU. I really don't know any of the gross details, but I'm sure someone else/google can help you out.

 

[CheesePoofs]

One disadvantage of dual athlon 64's (opterons) is that you have to use registered memory modules. These are slower than the standard memory modules used in a single A64 setup.

IMO dual cpu's is not worth it at all, because it will give you almost no increase in speed on any program unless you are using the computer as a server/workstation.

 

[tweeve2002]

why get Duel CPU's just wait for Duel Core CPUs to come out

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Originally posted by: tweeve2002
why get Duel CPU's just wait for Duel Core CPUs to come out

Yup, I'm waiting for those dueling CPU cores. Whoever has the fastest draw wins.

 

[stevty2889]

Yeah, it really depends a lot on what you are gonna use the computer for. Most applications do not take advantage of dual CPU's. If you are running some server or work stations applications, or do a lot of multitasking, it may be useful. For gaming, it is normaly slower, and no games I know of can take advantage of multiple cpu's.

 

[dguy6789]

It depends on what you are doing. Most applications alone do not benefit, but there is a huge benefit yoru overlooking.


Burn a cd at the max speed your system can do, encode a huge media file, run a web server, and play doom 3. Do this on a single cpu system, and it will slow to a crawl even on a might fx55. Do this on a dual cpu system, such as 2 opteron 244s, and you will play doom3 as fast as if nothing was running in the background at all.

Dual cpus are not just for the speed improvement of single apps, but the ability to not lose speed when running many apps simultaneously.

 

[deveraux]

Maybe I'm completely wrong but I was under the impression that the reason why HT and dual CPUs increase the speed of even single threaded apps is due to the fact that no system ever truly runs only one app. There are still lots of background applications fighting for CPU-time. Granted these don't amount to much but still, this would imply a slight performance increase with dual CPUs as the single threaded app will now be even less likely interrupted during run-time.