RE: A Question about Dual CPU systems

["Bob Dubner" <rdubner@bellatlantic.net>]

Whether you go dual or single, I have some experience with floating-point
number-crunching applications running under Windows.

Think Athlon.

Athlon CPU chips are cheaper, clock cycle for clock cycle, than Pentium
chips.  And their floating-point unit is more efficient.  In my experience,
a 1.2 gigahertz Athlon is a tad faster than a 2.0 gigaHertz Pentium-4
running the same number-crunching program.  I see motherboards.com selling
1.4 gigaHertz Athlons at $121, the 2.0 gigahertz Pentium-4 is $299.

I have friends who like doing SETI@home calculations.  They've seen what
I've seen -- a 1.2 gig Athlon slightly outperforms a 2.0 gig P-4.

It's possible that with special compilers and code written expressly for the
P-4, that the P-4 might be faster.  But generic floating-point code runs
faster on the Athlon.

My personal machine is a dual Athlon 1.2 gigahertz machine.  Tyan Thunder K7
motherboard; if you go this route you need to buy the Athlon MP chips, not
the XP.  I also bought an inexpensive IDE/RAID 0 controller to beef up disk
speed. (That's not important for number crunching, which is CPU limited, but
it makes disk-bound things like ordinary Windows apps a bit brisker.) I have
been very pleased with the results.

Be very careful with heatsinks.  The Pentium-4 incorporates a on-chip
thermistor circuit so that if you run the chip without the heatsink, it
slows down to a crawl.  If the heatsink falls off the Athlon, it'll burn up
in less than a second.

If you are anticipating lots of floating-point crunching, the Athlon is very
effective.