We have at least three dual processor systems in the Network Operations
Center here at The NOSPIN Group.  I know that we definitely did not realize
a 100% increase in processing over a single chip system of the same speed,
although the systems are certainly faster.

One significant issue is with the programs that you run.  For an application
to take advantage of multiple processors, it has to be "multithreaded", that
is, it has to have the capability to be "split" into multiple parts that can
run simultaneously or almost simultaneously.  You'll probably find that most
programs that you use aren't multithreaded, although a lot of new
graphically challenging games (like Quake III and others like it) are.

All is not lost, though, because most multiprocessor operating systems
(including Windows 2000) can use multiple processors efficiently by
assigning different tasks to different processors, in effect "balancing" the
processing load between processors.  In our situation in the NOC, that's
generally where we see the most improvement in performance.

Without knowing exactly what applications you'll be using, if they are
non-multithreaded, you could see as much as a 50% increase in performance.
If the applications are multithreaded, then you might see something
approaching a 100% increase, depending upon what other areas of your system
those applications impact.  As a seat of the pants estimate, I'd say that
our web server runs about 50% faster and the mail server is around 75%
faster than before.  But those are systems that perform no graphical
operations and have relatively slow processors (366MHz and 233MHz
respectively), so they are not bound by video or disk bottlenecks.  If your
applications are video or disk intensive, you may see lower performance
increases.

Hopefully that helps!

Drew Dunn
The NOSPIN Group, Inc.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neal Collins" <[log in to unmask]>

> I am currently running a Win 98 on a Pentium III 500 system with 224mb of
RAM. I was thinking of upgrading my system with the tyan tiger 1834D
mainboard and running dual Pentium III 500 cpu's. I know I will have to
upgrade to Win 2000 in order to take full advantage of dual processing. The
reason I was thinking of going dual is because of the cost of upgrading to a
single 1 gigahertz processor.
> If anyone has any thoughts, suggestions, comments on this method of
upgrading, I would appreciate hearing from you. If you currently run dual
processors, I am interested in knowing the speed boost you feel vs your last
single processor machine.
> Thanks to anyone that responds.

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