Domestic Dual Setup

[isaacmacdonald]

This afternoon I looked for some faqs on dually setups. I'm not really going to be using any super high load server software, and though I do do some heavy photoshop image manipulation (resampling, rotating, non-filter operations) on large (around 500-1000mb files) files, I usually am just kicking around on direct connect + playing games. I couldn't really find any guides for this kind of desktop/workstation/gaming usage.

So anyway, does anyone know of any guides, or have any reasonable things to point out to the aspiring dually? I've heard there are some issues with agp + dual processors actually slowing game performance down... is this true? Does the OS react in a noticeably snappier fashion with multiple processors? I would love to be able to eliminate all those times when you have to wait for a task to complete because it won't relinquish enough cpu time to open explorer. What kind of tangible performance increases can a home user expect from say, dual athlons > xp1800?? Do you need to install mutiple ram sticks? are say, 2 256mb sticks better than 1 512mb?

thanks for the insight

 

[Pink0]

I have a great scanner and when I scan images in at full detail for archiving they are 300-400 meg bitmaps. Now, when I open them in photshop they take upwards of 900 megs of ram. The one thing that I will recommend is that you get at least 1gb of ram for your photshop work since you seem to work with large files. most people don't and it's not necessary but for you it might be. If you're planning on having multiple files open and sending layers to the clipboard get 3gb of ram. Photoshop is multiprocessor enabled, yes, but generally only a few filters can take advantage of this and then you'll only see a 30-40% performance boost. Because of issues like bus contention you will see generally lower performance in a single application with a dually set up. I don't beleive that you need a dual processor set up at all. In fact, I personally believe that the only situation where this would be cost effective or reasonable is in a workstation which requires real time DVD editing and is running dual processor aware editing software. I find that in working with huge files in photoshop the processor is rarely the bottleneck. I find that most of the time is waiting for the scratch file or reading the raw data from the hard drive. I don't believe you would benefit at all from dualies. What I do believe you should spend that money on is another hard drive so your scratch file can be on a different physical volume and a lot of ram.
Hope that helps!

 

[Pink0]

? I would love to be able to eliminate all those times when you have to wait for a task to complete because it won't relinquish enough cpu time to open explorer.

I don't know what you're running now but my athlon xp 1700+ and P4 2.26b never do this. The OS is lighting fast in absolutely everything. I don't see how it could be more snappy.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Heh... I wish I could get enough ram so that photoshop wouldn't swap, but I doubt that's possible. Perform 2 global transformations on a 700mb file and the photoshop swap file will be like 3 gigs... with a history 10 levels deep, the swap file's gonna get up into the 9 gig range. In any case, I'm well prepared for that eventuality. I have a total of 310gb of storage (including 2 wd120jb's) .

As far as having the computer stall, it happens frequequently for me. My present setup is an xp1800 @ approx 1700mhz (sync'd 333fsb) with 512mb ram, running xpPRO (which I hate) on an iwill xp333 (too many f*cking "XP"s). Generally a lot of the slow downs occur as a result of tons of background apps (not to mention memory leaks from direct connect), and a couple foreground apps that want 100% cpu time for a nano-second- which they just can't seem to get.

I am a little concerened about this "competing for the bus" thing you brought up. what's the deal with that? Also, how do the processors handle the memory? (looking at the mpx chipset) Do they "compete" as with the bus??? hmmm...

 

[Pink0]

Yes, until we have hypertransport in the hammer architecture memory and the bus is shared. In games, dual processor systems are slower than single processor systems. There are a few articles on this at tomshardware. Duallies are faster when you're running a bunch of programs in windows in theory. However, since I do this and my processor is never taxed while multitasking duallies wouldn't help me. If you're multitasking and your CPU is at 100% then it will help you. For individual applications and memory performance you will see a performance decrease because the two processors share the same bus and the same memory.