Dual o/c celerons. Cheap performance...

[Joxx]

With <A HREF="http://www.msi.com.tw/Product/mainboard/6321.htm">Microstar 694D Pro (MS-6321)</A> and dual 566MHz Celerons o/c to 850MHz you should probably have a very cheap and powerful system. I would be interesting to find out if the performance in workstation tasks (like video encoding) is close to doubble PIII-850MHz...

[Walrus]

Just a cautionary note: I have a dual Celeron 366 (overclocked to ~510 mhz) system, and while it may be fast now, it took me SO long to get it running stable that I would have been better off not bothering or just getting 2 Pentium 3 550s. The Abit BP6 board has been a nightmare from day one, and only after investing in ~ $120 in cooling and buying a new power supply can I run the system well with the case totally off. It also took a good deal of "testing" at my local computer store to find 2 Celeron 366s that actually would overclock (that was out of 17 I tested), and even now it's not perfect. If you want cheaper performance, I'd recommend going with Athlons, 2 of them. (use a network)

[Joxx]

Walrus,

Is your system really, really fast? (like an 1GHz system?) In encoding tasks...

Do you need special drivers or programs to make use of the dual processors?

[Frank Marshall]

Hey Joxx,

One thing I noticed in the reviews I've read is that Win98 doesn't support dual CPUs; you'd need WinNT or 2000 (or I guess maybe a UNIX varient; Linux?)

[kefoo]

Another thing you have to keep in mind is that Windows NT (4.0, and probably 2000)doesn't automatically make use of multiple processors. Each program has to be specifically written to take advantage of the additional cpus. Other (better designed) operating systems like Linux will use the additional processors transparently to the program.

Kevin

[dZeus]

With Microstar 694D Pro (MS-6321) and dual 566MHz Celerons o/c to 850MHz you should probably have a very cheap and powerful system. I would be interesting to find out if the performance in workstation tasks (like video encoding) is close to doubble PIII-850MHz...

Don't tell me you didn't know Celeron-2 doesn't support SMP....

I better tell you this now, before you buy it and find out yourself

[Walrus]

Joxx: When my system works correctly, I find it quite fast. As for taking advantage of multiple CPUs, you do need a SMP enabled OS. WinNT/2K, most unix variants, OS/2 SMP, BeOS should all handle multiple chips well. Also, in a way, it doesn't matter if programs are designed to handle multiple cpus.. For programs that don't multithread, just run 2 parallel copies working on different tasks and you get an aggregate 80% performance improvement. Under W2K/NT4 you can either specify what cpu a task runs on, or let the OS auto-assign tasks to CPUs. Either way, as long as you have at least 2 encoding tasks running both chips should be fully occupied, and you should be getting at least some advantage from having 2 CPUs.
That all said, I found the experience of dual overclocked chips to be one I'd rather not repeat.

[CrazyBee]

AFAIK the original Celeron was not supposed to used in a dual processor set-up. That changed. Also, the BX chipset wasn't supposed to have the UDMA 66 on their either.

The BP6 has both.

Only bad thing with the BP6 is that you can disable the UDMA 66 controller but it won't let go of the IRQ. From what I have heard (if there is a way let me know so I can tell my friend). So, gonna be a pain to get a Fastrak66/100 in there.

[Walrus]

CrazyBee: I think all of the earlier Celerons supported SMP whether or not Intel admitted it or not. (the Celeron-As weren't supposed to have it, but my 2 Celeron 366s handle it fine) The issue of UDMA66 can go away with the right BIOS patch. Go to bp6.com and search for a BIOS firmware listed that removes UDMA-66. It will permamently remove it from your system including IRQ assignments. That said, if you're not using it, even though it technically grabs an IRQ, you should not have any problem getting another device working on the same IRQ.