[ On Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at 13:24:05 (+0100), zafer@gmx.org wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: single or dual CPU
>
> The Advantage of an MP System is not that much at a glance.
> You get more speed during compiling Stuff (kernel, programs,) but only if
> you use appropriate Options (make -j 4, e.g.).It's fun ;)

It depends on how you use your system.

If your system is primarily a single-user workstation and you rarely try
to do more than one thing at a time as its sole user then one good fast
CPU is probably sufficient.

(once upon a time it was extremely useful to have two CPUs on any X11
workstation if you ran any significant programs other than the Xserver
and maybe an xclock directly on your machine, but it seems these days
that advantage is more difficult to perceive :-)

However if you use your system as a general purpose multi-user server
(even if it only sees multiple logins from the same human user :-) then
you'll find that having at least two CPUs will reduce the latency of
many commands and services once you get the system doing more than one
thing at a time.  You can get a lot more overal throughput from any
decently designed SMP machine.  I'm really beginning to like using my
aging old AlphaServer 4000 with its dual 400MHz processors now that it's
running quite stable, even though it can't compile quite so fast as my
also aging P-II 300Mhz system, because it can go more combined work than
the PC ever could (and not just because it has three times the RAM that
the PC has ;-).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
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