DUAL CPU Motherboard recommendations

[Nowhere]

M3, I have one question regarding dualies (never owned one, though I thought about it from time to time...). You see, there's this one thing that irritates me on my AXP 1700+ (and since that's fairly powerfull cpu for what I'm doing, I guess things will be no different on faster ones). Every now and then some application hangs in a way that it uses practically 100% cpu (I move mouse, cursor moves 6 minutes later, you get the idea). Sure, I could eventually kill it and winXP will be again up and running smooth, but that would take faaar more time than reset (and this solution is also irritating since my machine is up 24/7)...
So...is it true that dualies are somewhat immune to this thing? If yes than one could be my perfect workstation I guess (and since mainly for www, music playback, p2p, and such things, even p3 coppermines would be enough I think...btw, I've found on 2cpu forum the deal on dual i815 Acorp board you've mentioned earlier...damn, why they won't ship here (not to mention that I don't have acces to credit card that's usable in such online stores and that this deal is even cheaper than single i815 boards here... )

[UtwigMU]

Generally a good local hardware store can order stuff for you.

But there would be a premium.

IMO just get a BX dual SLOT1 or S370 board 2nd hand.

Saw one running for 50€ here, but haven't gotten it since it was QDI.

[MultimediaMan]

Sometimes, a duallie will survive a really bad crash that a single CPU machine might not recover from: it really depends on the crash, though. The biggest variable I've seen are drivers. Some work better than others for SMP-based machines.

P3s and the I815 chipset are a good combination...too bad you can't use more than 512MB RAM, though. (I have two of the boards, an 815 RAID and the ISA 815EPD).

[X-Caliber]

well, in the end I have decided to KEEP my P2B-DS board, run the FSB @ 133MHZ, and get two 1.4GHZ Tualatins....The cost of getting a PC-DL, new Power supply, SCSI card, new DDR Ram, and one Xeon costs more than two Tualatins - and I don't need the extra horsepower........Besides, when Intel releases their 64Bit CPU, this 32bit stuff will be worthless!

a_h: I am still waiting to hear about your Parhelia experience!! My P2B-DS @ 133MHZ FSB will run at AGP2.7x, and I would like to try a Parhelia (mainly for dual gamma correction, something my G400 lacks). btw, Thanks for all the help !!

[a_h]

I'm a bit late, I know, but now I can say that my P works happily in my machine.

Support tool says 4x AGP is in use, and after some hours of gaming I cannot report any hangs.

3dmark2001 runs without problems too. However 3dmark doesn't use textures heavily, so I'm currently downloading specview, but I don't expect any problems at all.

I'm just happy with the Parhelia.

Just the cables are still missing, but I expect them to arrive next week, so I can try the tv-out too.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by X-Caliber
Besides, when Intel releases their 64Bit CPU, this 32bit stuff will be worthless!

Intel already has released their 64-bit stuff. I should know, I worked on some of it. Their 32-bit stuff will be their consumer end for quite a while. One Itanium processor costs more than the entire system you just decided not to build.

[MultimediaMan]

Not to mention, there are "Irregularities" in the Itanium.

[Wombat]

What do you mean? I really don't know.

[MultimediaMan]

Intel Recommends you underclock the Itanium 2...otherwise it may not handle some algolrithms correctly.

[Wombat]

Could you show me where? A release or something. I can't believe I haven't heard about this. I'm aware of bugs that cause the chips to be sorted at packaging time, but by customers?

[MultimediaMan]

Read about it here.

[Wombat]

Wow. I had no idea. But I was involved with those efforts.

See, that's what they get for laying me off

[a_h]

Update: it seems I'm wrong with the irq-sharing issue. At the moment only 2 irqs are shared, since the Parhelia had to share the irq with my soundcard, I switched the soundcard to another slot, eh voilà - the P has its own.

Brought only ~1.5% more performance...

So I can only say there are no problems at all. However you decided to keep your board, so I hope the Tualatins work with it, since they need different voltage regulators which can handle slightly lower voltages.

I'm curious what you will report, Hannes

[Nowhere]

M3, will duallie be more immune to those specyfic crashes? (not really crashes...but it's easier and far faster to push reset)
One would assume that it's not a problem to kill a application that eats 100% cpu, since you've got second one for your disposal...or am I cluelles here?
btw, I'd guess that in i815 P3 duallie (if I will be able to get one... ) I'll have bundled winXP drivers rather, and drivers for G400 & millenium II and perhaps for chipset from intel and the ones for network chips (which I'd guess are non probematic because they're onboard...). I'm assuming that HP knows how to make good drivers too (never had problems with mine Deskjet 930c...but I'm using windows drivers anyway, too lazy to get HP ones ) Hmmm...only soundcard could be a problem I think (Vortex SQ 2500, OTOH it's using drivers that came with XP)

[MultimediaMan]

Single threaded programs have a hard time truly locking up a duallie. However, WinXP tries very hard to load balance between the processors, so oftentimes it's a wash.