is there a tool that will measure my processor's CPU speed?

[Rick York]

However, there are some applications and circumstances where SMP can give a doubling or more of the system's performance. One example is a test that was run on an early Athlon dual-CPU machine where the Linux kernel was compiled and it gave a 2.2X speed up. This is a case where the application was not processor-bound but was I/O-bound. In most multithreaded apps that are processor-bound the speed improvement will be less than 2X or 100%. http://www.aceshardware.com has an interesting workstation guide that tested performance of dual CPU systems on a variety of 3D rendering apps. The performance improvements ranged from around 30% to 80% if I recall correctly.

[Nish Nishant]

Well, I just tried out some benchmark stuff and am feeling better. My double-CPU system both 550 is faster than a single P-III 800. That's fine with me. :-) In fact it's as fast as a single P-III 1 GHz I lost 100 Mhz [I thought I'd get 1100 MHz] somewhere... Nish p.s. Try sisSoftSandra next time any of you have similar CPU related headaches Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Konstantin Vasserman]

I agree. It just sounded like Nish was looking for his CPU frequency to double and I want to make sure that he knows that it won't.

[Konstantin Vasserman]

Nish, I am sorry I brought you so much disappointment. :( But it's like Todd and Rick said - you will see performance improvements, unfortunately not as much and probably not where you were expecting them.

[Nish Nishant]

:-) It's not you Konstantin. Not at all. It's just that the harsh realities of double-CPUs hit me so hard in the face, that for a few uncertain moments of sorrow, I could have died of mental suffocation, that's all. Thanks for revealing the truth to me, even if the truth that was revealed was of a dark and foul nature. The evil that men do lives after them and so be it with Intel :-( Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Nish Nishant]

Konstantin Vasserman wrote: It just sounded like Nish was looking for his CPU frequency to double and I want to make sure that he knows that it won't. Yes. My ideas regarding multiple processors were quite wrong, till you explained it to me. Thanks Konstantin :-) Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Nish Nishant]

I checked Naveen's utility :- -[snip from article]- CPU’s approximate speed can be obtained from registry key ~MHz under HKLM\\Hardware\\Description\\System\\CentralProcessor\\0 registry entry. -[/end of snip]- Fat lot of good that's gonna do me! Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Todd Smith]

Yup. And my system at work is off by about 75mhz.

Todd Smith

[Paul Watson]

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: The evil that men do lives after them and so be it with Intel Do not confuse your ignorance as the evil of others, young man. :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

[Nish Nishant]

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh Driving sharp thorns into my bleeding wounds :-) Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Paul Watson]

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: Driving sharp thorns into my bleeding wounds Hey that reminds me of Shaka Zulu who made his troops run over fields of thorns to toughen their feet. Any soldier who fell or refused was tortured by impaling them on long 8inch wide spikes, left hanging for days on end, kept barely alive. Sounds nuts but his "armies" ruled Southern Africa because they were the toughest, meanest and best used troops around. You do know who Shaka Zulu is, right? And Nish, cheer up! Please! You sound so depressed about something. Either let it out and maybe we can help or buckle up and put on a brave face. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

[Nish Nishant]

Paul Watson wrote: And Nish, cheer up! Please! You sound so depressed about something. Either let it out and maybe we can help or buckle up and put on a brave face. Well I was using a P-III 650 MHz with 128 MB Ram and it wasnt really fast for me [at office] Now they've brought back some of our machines from the US office and I was alloted a Dual-P-III-Xeon-550/100 with 128 MB ram. I was under the impression that this will double up as 1.1 GHz and now people tell me I was wrong. Two processors wont double the speed. Now I am worried whether I have gone for a slower box than my old one. Anyway I am gonna push for more ram - maybe add another 128 so I'll have 256 which should be okay. Plus my monitor is 14" [imagine that] I want a 17" monitor but I am not sure it will be approved :-( That's why I am trying to get a desktop panning software which will extend my 800x600 screen to a 1024x768 virtua;l desktop All my searches on the net give me software that allows us to use multiple desktops which is not what I want at all. Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Paul Watson]

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: Anyway I am gonna push for more ram - maybe add another 128 so I'll have 256 which should be okay. I have to repeat what we all know: Extra memory makes a far greater difference than a few hundred extra megahertz. 128 is really not enough IMHO, I have 256 and want to go up to 512 soon. Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: Plus my monitor is 14" [imagine that] I want a 17" monitor but I am not sure it will be approved When I moved from 14" to 17" I could not believe how much it improved my working style. Really push your boss for that upgrade Nish, it helps a lot. Hey Nish, to cheer you up I will admit that the way SA are playing cricket right now makes me think India could beat us as well! :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

[Nish Nishant]

Paul Watson wrote: I will admit that the way SA are playing cricket right now makes me think India could beat us as well! :-) Even when you are losing, you still know how to wag your tongues, you south africans :-) Right I want to see how Australia will fare against sri-lanka, with Murali looking like he'll get a wicket every three overs. Nish Sonork ID 100.9786 voidmain www.busterboy.org If you don't find me on CP, I'll be at Bob's HungOut

[Paul Watson]

Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: Even when you are losing, you still know how to wag your tongues, you south africans Being down just means we shout louder :-D Though we did learn from the best of toungue waggers, the Aussies. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge

[Daniel Turini]

I develop applications that run tipically in 4-way or 8-way SMP. One of the biggest challenges is keeping all processors working. When you start programming in SMP you'll find yourself quickly using the Interlocked* API functions. In simple terms, the name says all, you start (at least, conceptualy) locking memory locations, so only one processor can use that memory location. So, your performance drops very fast. Look for "scalability" in MSDN and you'll find tons of articles dealing with this. Chris probably is reading these articles now :) Careless SMP programming can lead to problems like "processor afinity", when one processor is at 90% of CPU and the others are at 5%. Try using ASP accessing Access databases or programmers that put ADO connection objects in Session("") and see what I mean. Other common problem is excessive CPU usage because of lots of threads waiting on some mutex or critical section. Sometimes you choose non-optimal algorithms just to avoid concurrency. There's an ad for a malloc replacement on DDJ that says [something like] this: "If a malloc takes 2ms in a monoproc system, how much time it will take on a 4way SMP ? 200 times longer" Crivo Automated Credit Assessment

[Steffen Opel]

Daniel Turini wrote: I develop applications that run tipically in 4-way or 8-way SMP. One of the biggest challenges is keeping all processors working. Ah, the right guy at the right moment, eventually :-) I've been googling quite some time looking for a tool to do just the opposite, i.e. forcing an application to use one and only one cpu on W2K pro. Keywords seem to be a bit challenging here, the only thing I came up with is an apparently complicated and W2K server only procedure for tuning the entire working set. Task manager allows one to set afinity alongside priorities, but only manually. One can start 'cmd.exe' with a priority flag, but unfortunately not with a similar afinity flag. I even tried applying the application compatibility toolkit W98 layer, hoping and asuming this would imply single cpu usage, but to no avail. Any idea/hint would be great! You know, it's pretty annoying to always go the manual route when trying to run a otherwise deadlocking game for a few spare minutes between workload ;-) Thanks and Ciao, Steffen

[Daniel Turini]

Steffen Opel wrote: I've been googling quite some time looking for a tool to do just the opposite Hehehe, never needed that, maybe you'd find something in the Resource Kit, but I would try a little utility that calls Get/SetProcessAffinityMask with the PID and keeps only one bit set. Crivo Automated Credit Assessment