Dual processor

[-lynx-]

Just wondering if anyone's running a dual processor board? Are there any significant benefits? Would 2 slower CPUs deliver better performance than a single faster one?

[Lephturn]

I run an Abit BP6 with dual Celeron 366's @ 500 Mhz as my server box.  As a Win2k server running ISA server (proxy/firewall) and some other stuff, it ROCKS.  I don't use it as a gaming machine though.

Here is the scoop.  To get a real benefit from dual processors you need two things, an OS that can use the second processor, and an application that is multi-threaded in a way that can take advantage of multi-processor.  That means you would need to run Win2k Pro for your machine if you wanted to play AH on it.  The second part is the problem, as AH is not really designed (to my knowledge) to support SMP (Symetrical Multi Processing).  Although the your OS would run faster and the OS load on the system would be spread between two CPU's, I think that would be the extent of the benefit you would see.  I have not tested this, but I would wager you would see only a small increase in performance in AH on a multi-processor box compared to a single proc box with the same speed CPU and equal other hardware.  SMP machines are best used as servers, and in my experience, they don't really pay off as gaming rigs at the moment.  Even an app that is written to support SMP like Quake 3 gets a fairly small performance boost from the second chip.  At the moment, I'd say you would be better off just getting a single processor that's faster with the extra money, and get lots of good RAM.

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[-lynx-]

Thank you leph   I was hoping to be somehow able to run AH in FSAAx4  

Next question: what is RAID and would anyone be better off with it in AH?  

(thank you for your patience with ignorance)

[Lephturn]

Heheh, no FSAA is a video memory bandwidth limitation.  No 4xFSAA without at least 128 megs of video RAM.  Voodoo 5 6k would have done it... shame.  

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent depending on who you ask) Disks.  The idea is that instead of buy one big fast disk that is a single point of failure, you combine a bunch of smaller cheaper disks and build an array that gets bundled up and appears to the OS as one big very fast disk.  This is normally done for both speed and data redundancy reasons, as well as cost.

Basically, there are new mainboards out there like the Abit KT7-RAID that will allow you to use multiple cheap IDE drives (RAID is normally done with expensive SCSI drives) to build a simple RAID volume.  The benefit is that if you set it up as a simple stripe set, when your HD is reading or writing data it can do so using multiple disks simultaneously.

Results with IDE raid have been mixed.  If you were trying to build a small business server on the cheap, it would be the way to go.  However, for a price/performance minded gamer I would recomend just a nice big/fast cheap IDE drive with the highest spindle speed you can afford.  A nice IBM Deskstar 7200 Rpm 75 Gig for example.  There are lots of competitors around.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"