dual processors good for gaming?

[Boyne7]

are dual athlon mps or modded athlon xps good for gaming?

 

[halkebul]

Dual processors only benefit basically one game, Quake 3, because it's multithreaded. Writing such programs should only be done by a Star Programmer because they're tedious and hard to follow even with densly commented code. Further, you would also need an operating system that supports dual processors. Windows XP Professional edtion, Linux, Windows 2000 do. Win XP Home editon, Win 9X/Me do not support dual processors.

 

[Bovinicus]

There are a couple of games that support SMP, and Quake3 is the most popular. I believe Quake1/2 support it as well... That's about it. It's not worth it.

 

[Mloot]

Here's a question for ya. I am considering a dual MP/XP setup for sometime next year. You guys mentioned that dual CPU's won't benefit most games, but will it hurt your gaming? Or will most games play about the same as they would on one processor? I would love to have a decent gaming system that would allow me to run DC at the same time, and when I wasn't gaming be a killer cruncher.

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: Mloot
Here's a question for ya. I am considering a dual MP/XP setup for sometime next year. You guys mentioned that dual CPU's won't benefit most games, but will it hurt your gaming? Or will most games play about the same as they would on one processor? I would love to have a decent gaming system that would allow me to run DC at the same time, and when I wasn't gaming be a killer cruncher.

It will hurt performance a bit but not to the degree that the game will become unplayable.

 

[Detselom]

Windows 2000 supports dual processors. You could crunch numbers and play games at the same time or even rip a dvd and play games with no performance hit.

edit:checkout http://www.2cpu.com

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Boyne7
are dual athlon mps or modded athlon xps good for gaming?

to answer your question rather bluntly.. no, not really.

no games support SMP (cept one) and its no real benefit, any new CPU will run Q3 over 150 FPS anyways.
besides, dual CPU chipsets are slower when only using 1 CPU.
Dual CPU is for people who are finatics with Distributed computing projects, and graphics design.

 

[Bovinicus]

You guys mentioned that dual CPU's won't benefit most games, but will it hurt your gaming?

Yes, but only very marginally. There should be no more than a 5-10% different, if that. In fact, gaming performance should increase if you are performance intensive tasks in the background, compared to a uniprocessor system.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: halkebul
Dual processors only benefit basically one game, Quake 3, because it's multithreaded. Writing such programs should only be done by a Star Programmer because they're tedious and hard to follow even with densly commented code. Further, you would also need an operating system that supports multiple processors, Windows XP Professional edtion, home editon does not support dual processors, and linux - maybe some other lesser known Operating systems.

are you saying xp pro doesnt support smp?
i was under the impression that it did..

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: ChampionAtTufshop

Originally posted by: halkebul
Dual processors only benefit basically one game, Quake 3, because it's multithreaded. Writing such programs should only be done by a Star Programmer because they're tedious and hard to follow even with densly commented code. Further, you would also need an operating system that supports multiple processors, Windows XP Professional edtion, home editon does not support dual processors, and linux - maybe some other lesser known Operating systems.

are you saying xp pro doesnt support smp?
i was under the impression that it did..

O! sorry! Worded that statement kind of funny. Win XP Pro does support SMP. I'll change it in my post, thanx for pointing that out!