Performance difference? Dual PIII800 vs single PIII866?

[peemo]

My IT dept is prepared to switch my current Dell 4100 PIII866 on i815 @ 133MHz for a Dell Optiplex GX300 2 X PIII800 @ 100MHz.

Will I notice a performance decrease when only a single processor is in use?

How much gain will I notice when both CPUs are in use?

Running Win2K, typical office apps (large Excel spreadhseets & Access databases) & MathCad.

Thanks

 

[Adul]

I don't think you notice tomucn of a difference. UNless you are managing to stress that system really hard. I would stay with you current machine, I do see you need for dual cpu's. Unless mathcad is SMP enabled, you will not be taking full advantage of dual CPU's.

(unless you want to crack rc5 😉)

 

[lundog22]

Well well well, I say you can always use more power 🙂

Does your system feel really slow when you start lots of programs? Running office, playing Mp3 with winamp, load up a few mpeg and playing some game at the same time?

If you do, then a dually is what u can get to help them run better 🙂

 

[Noriaki]

For stuff that's not SMP aware it'll be a decent step down.
866 to 800 isn't a big issue...but 133 to 100 can be.

For stuff that is SMP aware it'll be quite a bit faster.

Stuff like Excel you usually need I/O throughput more than CPU time, so the 866/133 is probably a slightly better choice.

I dunno about MathCad...

If you do heavy multitasking, even if it's all smallish apps then the Dual would probably be better to.

 

[peemo]

Thanks for the replies. I think I'll run a few tests to see the performance difference as both machines are in the office now.

lundog22,
Office machine. No MP3, no games, etc.

 

[GFORCE100]

I would say the SMP system will come victorious from your tests. Large databases like more power to browse through their records faster providing the data is in RAM and not on the HDD since that will slow anything down.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

I would expect the SMP machine to perform better when multitasking (something I do all the time), and there should not be a significant hit when running a single app only utilizing one CPU -- even if a program utilizes 100% of one CPU, that's MORE than what it can utilize on a single cpu system, because there's always system overhead which will need to use a portion of the processing power - on a dual machine, the system overhead will take place on one CPU while the app is running on the other processor.