----- Original Message -----
From: Orlando Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 1999 9:51 PM
Subject: [expert] Dual Processors Systems yeah or nah
> I am considering building a dual Pentium 2 or Celeron system. I have been
> told that NT only benefits from the dual processors using specific
software
> applications such as Adobe. And that it generally cruises along on one
CPU.
> Is this true and if it is does the same logic apply for Linux. The system
> will be a dual boot workstation. What are the pros and cons on both OS's
> and what are the recommended CPU and board combos?
>
>
Thats sort of half-right.. NT and Linux can benefit from dual CPUs. The NT
and Linux kernels manage which app uses which CPU. A particular program can
switch from one CPU to another several times a second. So, the statement
that NT uses only 1 CPU is really not true. The catch is that typically,
most programs wont run any faster than they do on a single CPU system. This
is because most programs are single-threaded. If a program were
multi-threaded, it would be able to have threads go to different CPUs and
thus use more CPU time. Adobe Photoshop is multi-threaded, so image
manipulation will work more quickly in NT on a dual system than a single
system.. Quake III Arena also supports SMP, so it you have a dual system,
you should see higher framerates with a dual system.
