[ale] Motherboard ?

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Gary Lawler wrote:
> 
> I am going to build a new system, piece by piece, but was wondering if a
> bought a dual processor board can the board run with just one cpu until
> I have the money to by the second processor?

	Generally yes. This shouldn't be a problem but you'll want to check out
the specifics of your particular board.

> If I do have two processors will the computer run all programs and compile programs
> faster or dose that depend on the program I am running? 

	If your OS supports SMP than you'll see a generally linear increase in
performance and a very noticable increase in responsiveness. Where this
really is noticable is in multi-threaded applications. If you have a
single threaded app, it won't run any faster than with one processor.
However, the presense of an additional cpu will make your single
threaded app seem more responsive because there will be another cpu to
offload most of the system calls that your other cpu would otherwise be
forced to switch to. Less context switching goes a long ways towards
increasing responsiveness and my preference has always been to have two
500Mhz cpus over a single 1000Mhz cpu for this reason. The only
exceptions to this are for a pure number crunching app (such as dnetc or
seti - but [dnetc at least - I don't run seti] supports SMP and offsets
most of the difference) or when you've got apps that overload your bus
and your motherboard doesn't handle the bus efficiently. The later case
is more rare.

> This will run linux and windows
> 98 on a dual 1000mhz (even though I know windows 98 dose not support
> dual processors) w/ 256MB ram +.

	This will be a fun box. Enjoy! FWIW 256MB RAM is a good start. You'll
only need more if you see your swap file getting activated, then
incrementally add more as you can afford it. I guess you're using 98 for
games, otherwise I'd recommend NT or 2000. BTW - a multi-cpu box really
helps emulators like VMWare much more usable.

	Good luck & later,

		Ben Scherrey

PS: [To Gary or anyone else] Along these lines, is there a good location
to buy components or custom build setups with multi-cpu boards in the
Atlanta area? I bought one from Linux General Store a year ago (and am
still very pleased) but they've switched almost exclusively to the
brand-name boxes which is great for corporate customers but not what I'm
looking for.
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