Will the coming shift to dual-core processors give our SMP systems more life?

[Chaotic42]

Right now my computer has dual Athlon MP2800s. It games pretty well.

All of these games are moving towards dual-core compatability. I know that memory and architecture will keep my system from being all that it can, but it seems like I might not have to upgrade for years.

Any thoughts?

 

[Pariah]

Unlikely. I don't think we'll see any dramatic shift in software until early 2007 at the soonest. By then the MPx platform will be basically completely obsolete feature wise. For everyday tasks, except for random applications (gaming, large scale encoding, etc), a dual 2800+ is already overkill.

 

[Goi]

Like Pariah said, multithreaded programming isn't going to happen overnight. It's gonna take years. MP platforms will still have a role in large scale systems with more than 2 processors. Dual core is going to take a while to penetrate the market, and I don't think we'll see quad core anytime soon.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Goi
Like Pariah said, multithreaded programming isn't going to happen overnight. It's gonna take years. MP platforms will still have a role in large scale systems with more than 2 processors. Dual core is going to take a while to penetrate the market, and I don't think we'll see quad core anytime soon.

Well, the next Falcon 4 game is going to take advantage of dual cores. It's something I'll be buying, so maybe I can compare performance with single 2800s.

 

[Goi]

Well, "take advantage" is a rather vague term. I don't expect any game that comes out in the near future to really show significant improvement from multithreaded programming. Also, regarding your dual Athlon MPs, you would probably be very much memory bound, seeing that you're sharing a 333-400MHz FSB between 2 cores. The K8 core also has several improvements over the K7 core, so it's nowhere near a direct comparison.