DP vs MHZ for Multitasking- MURCER BOFFINS

[Brent]

OK, so a T-Bird 1.3GHZ with 266 FSB and PC 2100 RAM is benchmarking faster than a Dual Processor PIII 850 (according to my web research), particularly with memory intensive stuff like MPEG encoding, but what about the real world of multi-tasking using DP's and Win 2000? A friend of mine wants a new system and while he wants more speed as in number crunching for eg. Excel (currently he has a PII 233), he really wants "enough" speed AND the ability to for example run Internet Explorer, Photoshop, Office etc, etc at the same time, at a fair rate of knots, without the inevitable slow down and eventual reboot due to low resources/ memory leaks and poor multi-tasking with Win 98se. For the money, would he be better off with Win 2000 (he is going Win 2000 anyway) and a DP PIII 550E, or a T-Bird 1.xGHZ single CPU? Also what mobo?
He is not a gamer but depends on a G400 DH heavily for his work (day trader) and wants a stable platform-my visions of VIA mobo chipsets and AGP seem clouded with bad hearsay.

[Wombat]

It sounds like what your friend wants is a fast single-proc CPU with at least 512MB of memory.
I'll wait for those that have DP systems to weigh in here.

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Epox 8KTA3 w/ Duron 850@7.5*133 with Alpha 6035, 256MB Crucial 7E, G400MAX,SBLive!-MP3,Pioneer 10x DVD, Plextor 12/10/32A, IBM 45GB 75gxp, and a Sony 420GS. Running RH7.0 (2.4.0-final), and Win98 (when I have to).

[Pace]

Well, just ignore the poor multitasking of Win98 in your choice! Win2k is much better

So, single vs dual processors...I'd say a T-Bird probably, and you'd be able to sort out any problems with AGP by asking here too

The choices for a good T-Bird mobo are probably between Abit and Asus, but I'll also let those users advise you here.

If I was using VIA myself, I'd much rather go with the T-Bird - rather than dual Intels, for cost reasons and that VIA chipsets will likely have more trouble organising twin processors than 1

One final point, just how much Photoshop does he do? It's the only SMP capable application you've mentioned, so could be an important factor.

P.

[Topha]

you could wait for the dual amd boards and with a little luck and a lot of money youll cross the 3ghz barrier soon

[Guyver]

If he's got the dough, then a nice ServerWorks chipset Dual PIII-1Ghz would be sweet...

Although, the single Athlon works very well especially when coupled with DDR266 SDRAM.

I myself use a slimmed down dual processor board, the ASUS CUV4X-D with the VIA 694X chipset.

It has been rock-solid with my twin 933Mhz PIII's Oc'd to 1008Mhz...

It's all about what the end-user wants, and what they can afford.

There's rumors of a DP athlon rig coming, but I haven't heard when other than the more than famous around here "Soon!"

Guyver

[superfly]

The first dual athlon board will be released by tyan,using the 760 MP chipset,but it won't be available until sometime in Q3,and also carries quite a price tag too...1000$.

The reason it costs so much is that the chipset alone has 900 pins,because of the point to point bus protocol the athlon uses and since there's 2 cpu's,it basically doubles the chipset complexity.

The board itself also has to use 8 layers so that it has enough room for all the extra traces(most boards use at most 6),so that's another reason for the added cost.

And since the board is intended for servers,it also packs 5 64bit,66mhz pci slots as well as dual channel ultra 3 scsi and onboard ethernet.

In fact the board is so big,it won't even fit in most full tower cases,it requires a server case.

[Brent]

Thanks everyone,
My friend had a look at your comments and his budget, and decided on a Dell DP PIII 866 on an 820 Intel board with PC 800 RAM. The deal was very keen and I think this will be a good combo and satisfy all his expectations.

[Technoid]

I wonder how long it will take between that monster priced board and a reasonable priced version!?!

[superfly]

Well tyan,or any of the other makers could make a version that doesn't use 64 bit pci or built in scsi and it would make the board cost quite a bit less,but unfortunately there's no real way around the chipset issue since it still needs those 900 pins regardless of extra features.


I believe that the only time we'll see dual processor setups with AMD cpu's will be when AMD releases the their 8th generation cpu's early next year(clawhammer/sledgehammer),since they're also implementing a different bus protocol(called LDT-lightning data transport),which is a shared bus protocol similar to intel's but much faster and is much less expensive to implement than any point to point protocol will ever be.

[superfly]

Btw,the way here's an image that explains how the lightning data protocol works....

www.viahardware.com/winhec2.shtm .

It explains how a four cpu system will work,but the basic principle is the same for dual cpu systems.

The advantage of this arrangement is that as you increase the number of cpu's in the system,the available memory bandwith also increases because each cpu has it's own chipset and memory subsystem.

In current systems(including AMD's 760-MP chipset),you can increase the number of cpu's in the system,but the available bus bandwith will always stay the same regardless.