Win 7 and Win 8 with 4 physical processors?

[Kippa]

In the long term I might want a workstation with 4 physical cpus instead of 2. Does windows 7 allow 4 physical cpus? And if it doesn't will windows 8 support 4 physical cpus?

If it is a question of licenses I wouldn't mind paying twice for two licences so I could use 4 physical cpus in Windows 7 or 8. What is the score?

 

[hennessy1]

I believe you will need a server OS to support more then 2 sockets and that licensing will probably be the same for windows 8 as well.

 

[ViRGE]

I believe you will need a server OS to support more then 2 sockets and that licensing will probably be the same for windows 8 as well.

Correct.

"Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate allow for two physical processors, providing the best performance on these computers"

Only Server supports more than 2 physical CPUs.

 

[Matt1970]

The extra $$ you would spend on the quad socket boards and CPUs would be better used towards a faster quad core processor.

 

[oynaz]

In the long term I might want a workstation with 4 physical cpus instead of 2. Does windows 7 allow 4 physical cpus? And if it doesn't will windows 8 support 4 physical cpus?

If it is a question of licenses I wouldn't mind paying twice for two licences so I could use 4 physical cpus in Windows 7 or 8. What is the score?

I am curious: Why do you need 4 physical CPUs for a workstation?

 

[heymrdj]

I was saddened by this as well. When offered excellent Dell credit through work I was going to build up a quad socket 16-24 core workstation with 32GB of ram. It was only going to run about 6 grand (some parts from dell, others from other sites and installed myself). But then I found out Win 7 isn't supported. I would have to run 2008R2 which in and of itself is a huge jump.

As to why, VMWare Workstation 8 was my reason. It's nice being able to experiment with vmachines on your own powerful setup instead of always having to resort to going outward to another server. Though VCenter still makes it not so bad for things like esxi, it's just one less system to maintenance, run all the time, ect ect.

 

[yinan]

For that system and cost, just run 2008R2 on a technet copy.

 

[Kippa]

I am curious: Why do you need 4 physical CPUs for a workstation?

I wouldn't mind having a 4 physical cpu workstation for significantly cutting rendering times in the 3d package Lightwave.

 

[Lifted]

For that system and cost, just run 2008R2 on a technet copy.

Have you checked out the prices of quad socket servers and CPU's? The $800 copy of Windows Server would be a drop in the bucket. If he has to consider running TechNet (which if it's not for production I'd recommend as well) then he probably can't afford the server/workstation.

Edit: Oh, you were replying to the post above yours... I think.