Dual Processor Advantages?

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Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Just curious of how dual processors work, and what are advantages/disadvantages of them.

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  • Reply 1 of 11
    fotnsfotns Posts: 301member
    Dual CPUs systems work like a single CPU system, only with 2 processors.

    Advantage: faster

    Disadvantage: more expensive



    That was easy.
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  • Reply 2 of 11
    Heat is also a problem.
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  • Reply 3 of 11
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Need a fast system bus and optimized software to push it to the limit
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  • Reply 4 of 11
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    With dual processors, the software you use must be written to use both at the optimum level. Even then, you usually won't get double the processing power.



    In other words, 1.25Ghz times 2 does NOT = 2.50Ghz.



    That said, don't underestimate the enhanced computing by having dual chips. I'd definitely choose a dualie over a...singlie any day.
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  • Reply 5 of 11
    spookyspooky Posts: 504member
    you do however, have to wait in vain for the rest of your adult life for software developers to write their software to actually take advantage of the dual processors . . .
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  • Reply 6 of 11
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    As someone said i will take a single 2,5 ghz Chip against any dual 1,25 .

    MP are more expansive, produce more heat, and have better performance only in certain part of software. Personaly i will take a single 1,4 PPC 970 instead a dual G4.



    Dual are good if you are a monster power eater, a power user seeking to have the more horsepower possible. If there is two duals in the powermac line it's only because the G4 is getting old.





    I am ready to bet that the next generation of Powermac based upon the PPC 970, will have two single versions and one dual version. The PPC 970 is powerfull enough to ignore marketings tricks.
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  • Reply 7 of 11
    tigerwoods99tigerwoods99 Posts: 2,633member
    no slowdowns while using multiple applications
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  • Reply 8 of 11
    mattyjmattyj Posts: 898member
    Exactly. Using Dualies in OSX is a dream. I have a Dual 1Ghz DDR, and OS9 is slower than OSX because I cannot do multiple things at once. You can't ecode mp3 at 20x and install and application for instance, with a single processor machine.



    I only wish that Games used more than one processor, I've been told that Jedi Knight II does have SMP support, however it is not recommended, does anyone know how to activate it (if it exists) and why it isn't on?



    That is, if it does actually have it...
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  • Reply 9 of 11
    gizzmonicgizzmonic Posts: 511member
    If all applications were multithreaded, you wouldn't notice the blazing speed of dual CPUs, especially on an Apple machine. You'll see the most snappiness when a single-threaded process takes over one CPU without completely saturating the bus, leaving the other CPU 100% open.
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  • Reply 10 of 11
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Two conditions under which duals are beneficial:

    1. You are using an app specifically coded for duals

    2. You have two apps (even if not specifically coded for duals) churning away simultaneously



    There's always been this mythical notion that "in X everything will be faster on duals," perhaps because OS calls can run at the same time as app-specific computation, but I've never seen that actually demonstrated.
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  • Reply 11 of 11
    Quote:

    no slowdowns while using multiple applications



    Oh my god, multitasking in OS X is a wet dream. I can run soo many things at once with out a bumb. I`m a webdeveloper so I always have like 5000 Windows open and 200 apps running. I never once really seen a performance hit, with out trying to create one.
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