Dual proccessors

[old.mattshanes]

I was thinking of getting dual proccessor pc made up but i wanna know if will improve every game i play fps etc and make me play them to full power.
Would it improve my 3d mark a lot?and whats the good points and bad points of them?pls help.

 

[Embattle]

First you would have to use Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional and then you need games and applications that support dual processors and in the games arena only very few do, like Q3A. 3DMARK2001 doesn't support dual processors either so your resulting score stands a good chance of actually being lower with dual processors, applies with other games/apps that don't support dual processors as well.

 

[Testin da Cable]

In a word, no. The average game, as is, isn't coded to take advantage of multiprocessing capabilities.
On the other hand, the average modern OS is coded to thread itself across as many cpus as there are installed in your system. The gain for games here lies in the fact that your OS will give up a cpu to the game, allowing it to run at "100%" load while remaining system tasks are shunted off to the remaining available cpus. Realistically you will see perhaps a 5 to 15% gain in performance. Be aware that some OS's handle multiple cpus more efficiently than others, thus resulting in a better average performance gain.
You will find that some apps, I believe that 3DStudioMax is one, are coded to take full advantage of multiple cpus. Again the performance gain lies in the manner the underlying OS handles threading and stuff.

The rule "I have two cpus thus I have 200% performance" is a fable.

I'd advise going for the fastest single-cpu system you can get, unless you are going to be running programs of which the multi-cpu performance gain justifies the added cost.

 

[PR.]

I agree while my Dual P3 1ghz machine flew it wasn't anything special when playing games...

Where as my P4 1.9Ghz + GF4 4600 is something very different

 

[old.mattshanes]

Ok thx oh well my system is fine i was just wondering what dual proccessor pcs were like thx ppl.