Looking at going Dual processor, can someone help me out?

[BrunoPuntzJones]

EDIT: you can skip most of this, unless you want to read it. since the system is for games, SMP is not the way to go. thanks for reading though, and feel free to respond if you feel like it.

Howdy, put together a rig for overview last night, everyone thought it looked good (dragon+ and an xp1800). Except for a hans007 , he suggested that i look into going for a dual setup if i was going to spend that much. i talked with him for a bit and got kinda giddy about it, but wanted to ask some questions here to make sure if this is the right way to go, and what would be best for me.

the rig will be used for games 98% of the time. it's a gaming rig, plain and simple. word processing, email, browsing, etc. will also be done, but nothing really intensive other than games.

The original rig was:

Soyo Dragon+
XP 1800
Alpha 8045
Maxtors in a RAID 0
768 megs crucial ddr (i have one gig of it, unregistered)

What was suggested was the Tyan Tiger MP (S2460, AMD760) and XP 1600's (retail). The O/S will be XP Pro

This is where my questions start (and hans007 answered most of them, but want to double check on this $$$ of a purchase ):

Basically which is going to be faster for me:
1. Soyo Dragon+ and a XP 1800 at lets say...145fsb
2. Tyan MP with dual XP 1600's@133fsb

How would the dual 1600's stack up against a single XP 2000? against a 2.2ghz northwood?

Do XP's work fine on the Tyan board? Or do they have to be MP's? I have heard the new ASUS wont let XP's run in dual setup. Will I encounter this problem if I use regular XP's? Is there anything that needs to be unlocked for them to work? (ala changing the multipliers by bridging the L1's).

What about ram, should i get registered/ecc and avoid complications? does the board even take unregistered at all? i was thinking i could sell my 1 gig of crucial for 250$ (about 62$ a stick), get 768 registered, and be out about 10$.

Does the ram do fine in 3 sticks, i assume pairs are not needed right?

Does XP Pro do multiple processor fine? The#1 thing that worries me is that one processor will be idle ALL the time. Like if im playing a game, one processor does the game and the o/s, while the other just sits there. Do I have to set anything up? Like tell programs how to run, or is it all automatic?

I'd probably grab a RAID controller (i have 5 or 6 ide devices so need a controller anyway, might as well do raid). I assume I could put 2 RAID 0 drives on the controller and the regular slots on the board would still work fine for my other stuff? (2 hds on the raid, 1 hd, 1 dvd, 2 cdroms on the motherboard).

I know that board is not the best overclocker, but what can i expect out of it? anything over 133? what adjustments does it have (multipliers, cpu voltage, ram voltage, etc).

Is 431w (enermax) power supply enough to power a dual setup?

Or is this one of those deals that if i have to ask then im over my head. duals have always been way out of my budget (2+ years ago), so i havent really followed how they work how well they would work for me.

Basically the rig will be:

Tyan 760MP
Dual XP 1600 retail (save on hsf)
768MB Crucial DDR Registered ECC
Promise Fasttrack ATA 100 Raid card
2 maxtor 30 gig 7200 rpm in raid 0
WD 60 gig 5400 rpm as storage
Lite-on 16x DVD
Lite-on 24x CDRW
Enermax 431w PSU
Visiontek GF3 Ti200
Soundblaster Live MP3+ 5.1
2 Netgear FA310 TX NIC (does this card have problems like the fa311 does with 760 chipsets?) (one nic will connect to a switch, another to another computer, my switch is out of holes )

I'd really appreciate it if you guys could help me out. And thanks goes to hans007 for suggesting this.

 

[Remedy]

I'll keep it simple here. If you want to game 98% of the time then you need not to build a dual systems. Build the fastest clcoked uniprocessor system. Your probably going to hear someone in this thread say "Well I can multitask like crazy". That doesn't help your gaming performance at all.

Your performance will either A.)Drop or B.)Not increase.

XP processor work fine but i've seen instances where ppl couldn't boot 2 XP's. So its the luck of the draw for some and works for most. Chris from gamepc already demonstrated that XP's boot and work in MPX boards such as the Asus. Abbas from Tbreak already notified us that the XP's work in the MSI MPX board.

How would the Dual processors stack up against higher clocked processors such as 2.2 Northwood and Highest clocked XP? That depends on the workload you output. If your doing Audio/Video Encoding or the Graphic rendering which is multithreaded then your more than likely going to need the Dual setup. If it isn't multithreaded then i wouldn't even bother with the dual system.

The difference between the 760MP and MPX with memory is that the MPX allows for the first 2 Banks to utilize Unbuffered memory. If you want to use 4 Banks then you need to populate the 4 banks with Registered. So it goes first 2 DIMM banks unregisterd, Last 2 banks call for Registered. All 4 banks in unity need to be populated with 4 Registered Modules.

Windows XP Professional is Multithreaded for 2 cpus. You don't have to tell XP pro to do anything if you boot with 2 processors from Jump street. If you want to install one processor now and then later install a second processor. After installing the second processor, the OS should notice the change. If not then you need to select control panel, Go into device manager and select the Node Marked "computer" it should have the ACPI contoller denoted as "Multiprocessor PC". If not then you need to refresh the node so it can make the change.

Yes, a seperate RAID controller will give that freedom.

The Asus Bios has bus adjustments from 133 to 150mhz. But only one vcore adjuster rather than 2. Which makes it pretty useless. But an option none the less.

Hope i answered all the questions.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

cool, thanks remedy. that's what i was worried about, stuff not taking advantage of the 2nd cpu.

so xp pro won't divide it out enough for it to make a big difference?

like if i am playing UT, the o/s and UT will be on the same processor? or does the o/s take so little overhead that it's not really noticeable.

 

[Remedy]

I used to rock UT hardcore on a Dual system last year and it didn't even notice the second CPU at all. I was ashamed to spend that much money on a system and still get my arse stomped by some pencil neck with a Athlon 500. UT runs but the 2nd processor would just host the operating system. The 2nd processor probably wouldn't even escalate past 29% usage kernel or the system performance. It would only seem take adavantage of the over head if your running X services like Zonealarm and other unwanted system tray "hog" services.

The way how i did it this year as far as systems go, i just threw all my work on my Dual systems(6) and just game on a higher clocked Athlon.

 

[MrHelpful]

Dual is not the way you should go. In games, you can realistically see a 5-10% decrease in performance because of the overhead associated with SMP systems.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

<< Dual is not the way you should go. In games, you can realistically see a 5-10% decrease in performance because of the overhead associated with SMP systems. >>

roger that, i jumped the gun. i should have done more searching. general consensus here, and at 2cpu is that SMP for everything but games, it could actually decrease it due to overhead. looks like ill be going with the soyo and a 1800+ and pricematch it down the road with my amex

thanks again for the help guys, maybe the next rig will not only be SMP, but SCSI

 

[OS]

<< In games, you can realistically see a 5-10% decrease in performance because of the overhead associated with SMP systems. >>



That's not true, I've tested it myself. I've run game benchmarks with two cpus in and one cpu in on the same exact system. Run test with two cpus. Shut down, pull out a cpu. Run test again. There is no significant difference (I don't recall any variance greater than 1%).

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

i guess it wouldnt really help to have SMP though for games, so it's kinda a waste

so while it may not decrease, it wont really increase :|