Dual Processor Machine
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
I'm using an Abit VP6 motherboard with dual 933s @ 1002 and I'm happy with it. It uses a VIA chipset though, which is a bit dodgy... quite a few people have combatability problems. A good place to go is: www.2cpu.com If you're not that desperate, and the price doesn't bother you, the dual AMDs with the 760 chipset are looking very nice, although they are expensive. Cheers, Peter
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
If you are a C++ developer (you properly are since you're posting your question on CP) I would recommend you to consider setting up a RAID system. That will definitely give you more bang for the buck when it comes to reducing your compile times. I'm using a cheap on-board IDE RAID controller and a couple of 7200 RPM disks, and it really shines when I need to compile big projects. However there may be other reasons for using dual processor configurations for development than sheer performance. If you develop software that will be used on dual processor servers or workstations, then you should use a dual processor configuration for development too. There may be some thread synchronization bugs that will only show on a true multitasking machine. http://www.wdj.com/articles/1998/9804/9804b/9804b.htm Christian Skovdal Andersen
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I'm using an Abit VP6 motherboard with dual 933s @ 1002 and I'm happy with it. It uses a VIA chipset though, which is a bit dodgy... quite a few people have combatability problems. A good place to go is: www.2cpu.com If you're not that desperate, and the price doesn't bother you, the dual AMDs with the 760 chipset are looking very nice, although they are expensive. Cheers, Peter
I'm also using VIA chipset motherboard, the MSI 694D Pro-AR. It has an additional ide controller on board, a Promise ATA-100 with RAID. It's running a dual 1GHz PIII works well with Windows 2000. I do have some stability problems that seem to be associated with the on-board sound card. However, I'm mostly programming instrumentation control systems and programming hardware is always slightly unstable. Good Luck, Gil
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
At work I use a Dell 420 Workstation with Dual 733 processors. This is my third dell workstation and have never had a single problem with them - definitely the top of the line. At home I have a home-built workstation based on a Super Micro Dual Processor Motherboard with Dual P2-400's. It was working perfectly until a few months ago, it now freezes up occasionally. This is probably due to my drivers/software though since I installed VPN software and Digital Camera drivers around that time. This motherboard includes an onboard Adaptec dual channel SCSI controller. As someone else posted, it is critical that you have a dual processor machine if you do any multi-threaded developemnt. Concurrency bugs show up much faster on dual processor machines, the time savings from this quickly makes up for the extra cost of a dual processor machine. Chris Hafey
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
My personal machine runs on an Abit BP6 with dual S370 Celerons. The MB is great, however I am ticked that the power management has never worked right in Win2K, even after following instructions from bp6.com. Two well-respected sites with reviews are www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ The Signature, back by popular demand: Buffy. Pajamas.
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I've been living with a Dell 300 Mhz Pentium II box (single processor) as my development machine for what seems like ages, or at least the last few years. I'm ready to upgrade to something more powerful. I'm not scared to build something myself, so I plan to do just that. I have two questions: 1. Does anyone have any personal experience, recommendations, or suggestions as to the best most powerful (general non-server) dual processor motherboard that I might use? I plan to use Pentium III processors -- unless someone convinces me otherwise. 2. Does anyone know of any web sites which specialize in, and do a good job at, reviewing dual processor motherboards? Thanks for any assistance. I'm a frequent reader, infrequent poster. Regards, Larry
See Sharkey Extreme and Tom's Hardware two of my fav sites.
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At work I use a Dell 420 Workstation with Dual 733 processors. This is my third dell workstation and have never had a single problem with them - definitely the top of the line. At home I have a home-built workstation based on a Super Micro Dual Processor Motherboard with Dual P2-400's. It was working perfectly until a few months ago, it now freezes up occasionally. This is probably due to my drivers/software though since I installed VPN software and Digital Camera drivers around that time. This motherboard includes an onboard Adaptec dual channel SCSI controller. As someone else posted, it is critical that you have a dual processor machine if you do any multi-threaded developemnt. Concurrency bugs show up much faster on dual processor machines, the time savings from this quickly makes up for the extra cost of a dual processor machine. Chris Hafey
> As someone else posted, it is critical that you have a dual processor machine if you > do any multi-threaded developemnt. Concurrency bugs show up much faster on dual > processor machines [...] There are also possible situations that may *only* show up on multi-CPU systems. Things are different when you are using a system where two (or more) threads can REALLY be running at the same time. Peace! -=- James.