Is SMP worth it.

[fallenoncrack]

hehe twice the crack'n

 

[borealiss]

if you can afford it, and if it's not that much more, i'd get a dual. i have one right now. it's very handy at multitasking. the price difference in my opinion is well worth it. a fraction of the system cost for near 2x the multitasking performance. and having smp is not going to make you able to burn a cd while doing other stuff blah blah. you can do this just as easily with a single cpu, so don't factor that into your buying decision. cd burns are i/o limited, not cpu. anyways, it's great and i've never looked back. would i take a faster cpu over my dual? anything above 900 i would. but it depends on what your system needs are. if you just dabble, then i'd invest in a good single tbird system. a 1.2 ghz cpu can handle lots of stuff you throw at it, multitasking or not. and the dual tbird is more futureproof. might wanna upgrade later on. or you might get another motherboard that supports dual tbirds. keep in mind that there's hardware that is finicky with dual cpu systems, so factor that into the equation.

 

[BoberFett]

<< cd burns are i/o limited, not cpu >>

If you're using IDE and not SCSI, I/O is CPU bound.

 

[borealiss]

i realize that if you use ide, then burning is more cpu dependent then scsi, but cpu usage is so low on any decent system above 450 that the amount a cpu takes up at this speed should not be a factor in getting an smp box. most of the time a buffer underun occurs on eide systems not because a lack of cpu resources, but because the source had trouble keeping up with the target drive. this is assuming udma of course.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Yeah, assuming UDMA and perfectly ideal conditions. A lot of people haven't been able to get their drives to run in UDMA, so they're stuck with higher CPU utilization. Also, DMA has to be disabled for CD burners doesn't it? So you get high CPU utilization there. It's certainly easy enough to get a buffer underrun from too much CPU utilization if you're multitasking on an IDE system...

 

[thorin]

&quot;If you're using IDE and not SCSI, I/O is CPU bound. &quot;

I agree with borealiss, assuming a half way decent system and that DMA is enabled on all devices, the CPU difference between SCSI/IDE isn't that great.

Thorin

 

[BoberFett]

borealiss

The I/O itself uses very little of the CPU, but if you fire up a CPU hogging program that grabs the CPU for 100% for a few seconds, that's the end of that disc. If you're using SCSI or running a second CPU, that's just one less thing to worry about. It's a small difference, and not one you'll run into that often, but it does happen.

 

[thorin]

&quot;Also, DMA has to be disabled for CD burners doesn't it?&quot;

Where did you hear such a silly thing? Of the 3 or 4 systems I've ever used CDRs in they all had DMA enabled on all drives. Also through all my reading on CDR drives and on CDR Software sites I've never seen anything like that.

Thorin

 

[thorin]

&quot;The I/O itself uses very little of the CPU, but if you fire up a CPU hogging program that grabs the CPU for 100% for a few seconds, that's the end of that disc. If you're using SCSI or running a second CPU, that's just one less thing to worry about. It's a small difference, and not one you'll run into that often, but it does happen. &quot;

Have you heard of BurnProof?

Thorin

 

[BoberFett]

<< Have you heard of BurnProof? >>

Yep.

Does every CD drive in existence have it?

Nope.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Thorin, I've read many a thread on here where people were having trouble with their burners. One of the first suggestions is always &quot;disable DMA on the burner&quot;

 

[Moohooya]

I dissagree that huge ammounts of ram is necessary to see improvements with dual processors.

As a programmer I frequently write code that runs in multiple threads. Not because I assume there are multiple processors or because I assume I have huge ammounts of memory, but because it is the best way to do something. Any ole servers in an exe run in their own process. Think about all the services you have running at the moment, each (well most) tray icon has its own process tied to it, and the list goes on. Hopefully you don't hear you machine swapping constantly now, why would you why you have multiple processors? Sure any swapping that has to happen would be desired faster, but if you machine is swapping much now, get a memory upgrade for the extra $120. If not, get another processor. Programs don't need support for multiple processors, the OS does. Most programs now will run multiple threads. Looking as the task manager, I don't have a single program running at the moment that only has 1 thread. ie ALL my programs will benefit from a second processor. Well, that is not quite true. You can set a processor affinity to a thread, and perhaps a process. But this means the programmer explicitly says they don't want to run on multiple processors. This is typical in multi media apps where to get perfect timming, the thread runs on a single CPU. However, the other threads in that MM app, and processes on the machine will be more than happy to take the other processor.

Just my 2 cents

Moohoo

 

[Hanpan]

Jeez i started quite a discussion.

 

[Kayes]

I think I might want to be a convert.
damn...
probably will wait till march when i will ave enough for a tiger 100 and dual p!!! 850

 

[borealiss]

hmm, i've never had to disable udma on an eide burner, maybe others have. in that case then i suppose it would help to have dual cpus, but how many people anticipate this and therefore justify smp because they might have to implement this trick because they just might get a burner that does not work well with their systems? not many i would think. and if a program grabs 100% of the cpu utilization, it's interruption in the writing process depends on its priority. unless it's specified at a higher priority then writing software, then NT based machines should multitask and load balance the cpu to keep both tasks running. but say a program does grab the cpu enough for complete 100% load for a good period of time to cause a buffer underun due to lack of resources, given that a buffer of the same size is on a scsi and eide system, you're going to have buffer underuns on both systems, not just one exclusive to eide, because even though scsi is lower then eide, both still require the cpu. my point basically was that cpu utilization is so low that burning while &quot;multitasking&quot; isn't justification for anotehr cpu.

 

[Hanpan]

Bumped for CreepinD who has the same question.