2012 Project Question

[CDBob2011]

Hi! All I hope I'm in the right section

I understand the concept but don't know how to set it up.

Will winodws XP SP3 support dual processor motherboards

I want to get a new mobo next year that will hold TWO processors..

to speed things up.. I hope

maybe some one can point me to a good site that will explain how to set one up...

and will windows XP PRO SP3 support the mobo.. or will I have to get a different

OS to support TWO prcessors on a single mobo or will the new mobo come with

the drivers to run two processors together..

I'm running a intel Core i7 CPU 2.67 GHz now.. I'm assumming it has 8 cores

inside cause you see 8 time line windows in the CPU usage History window in the

Task manager >> processor tab.. I want to put two of these on one mobo...

The prices are dropping all the time so buying another intel Core i7 CPU 2.67 GHz

will be affordable by the time I get around to doing a new mobo...

Or am I just dreaming blowing steam out my you know what...

MaC!

[Tripredacus]

You should post the E number of your CPU to be sure, but I am going to guess that you have a Quad-Core CPU with Hyperthreading enabled.

[dencorso]

Win XP Pro SP3 supports up to 2 physical processors, no matter how many cores they have inside, and no matter whether they do have HyperThreading or not.

[CoffeeFiend]

to speed things up.. I hope

It basically won't help at all for the vast majority of tasks (it'll mainly help a few specialized tasks like video encoding)

maybe some one can point me to a good site that will explain how to set one up...

There's nothing much to it. Buy the proper hardware, put it together, install the OS as usual.

and will windows XP PRO SP3 support the mobo.. or will I have to get a different

OS to support TWO prcessors on a single mobo or will the new mobo come with

the drivers to run two processors together..

That much crunching power would typically benefit greatly from added RAM, which 32-bit XP won't support. Ditto for extra CPU registers and many, many other small things (e.g. the global dispatcher lock getting removed with Win7)

I'm running a intel Core i7 CPU 2.67 GHz now.. I'm assumming it has 8 cores

inside cause you see 8 time line windows in the CPU usage History window in the

Task manager >> processor tab..

No. It only has 4 cores. You see twice as many because of hyperthreading -- which was mainly developed as a way to work around the poor architecture of the Pentium 4 (Netburst) and its excessively long pipelines, effectively halving the cache per core in the process...

I want to put two of these on one mobo... The prices are dropping all the time so buying another intel Core i7 CPU 2.67 GHz

You can't put two i7's on the same motherboard, much like you couldn't do with any other "desktop class" CPU before. For this, you have to buy "server" CPUs i.e. Xeons for Intel setups.

will be affordable by the time I get around to doing a new mobo...

Keep dreaming First, you need a fancy dual CPU motherboard (of decent quality, and ideally with several key features) which is not going to become cheap in the foreseeable future. Then you need a pair of suitable Xeon CPUs. Right now that would be in the 5600 series (or better). If you want something which at least matches in speed with 2nd gen Sandy Bridge CPUs like the i7 2600k at stock speed (not the old and much slower ones like the i7 920 @ 2.67GHz), you'll need at least the Xeon W3690 but those can't be run on dual socket boards either. So that pretty much forces you to buy a pair of Xeon X5690's. And then the RAM... Yeah, you don't buy that uber-cheap consumer DDR3 RAM either, it has to be those expensive ECC RDIMMs. And lots of boards require a server chassis and PSU(s) too.

So let's say, a pair of Xeon X5690's (that's pretty much like getting a pair of "decent" 2nd gen i7's), a "basic" Supermicro MBD-X8DTE-F-O motherboard, and a measly 12GB worth of ECC RDIMMs at 1333MHz e.g. two 3x2GB kits (not that I'd want to be buying small 2GB sticks) like the Crucial CT3KIT25672BB1339. The total price so far is near $3000 (not bad still -- our last dual E5530 server costed ~$10k about 6 months ago), assuming you don't need a server case the the matching server PSU(s). And $3000+ later, you have something that still is no faster at most tasks due to other limitations (like the disk subsystem, network latency & throughput, the GPU limiting games, most software not magically being able to make use of 16 logical CPUs, etc)

Or, if you want something twice as fast as your existing i7 920 (assuming I got the model right), then spend $300 on a i7 2600k and be done with it (well, OK, you still need a new Socket 1155 motherboard, but those are a lot cheaper still). Or overclock it to be even faster. Or maybe you just want/need a $150 Crucial M4 SSD...

[CDBob2011]

Ok that makes sense so I'll just keep dreaming till I have a rich uncle that dies...

[allen2]

The main thing there is finding out what you consider slow (special application ? special operation with special application ? everything ?). In most case you can solve those speed problems by either buying only one or two component and if you aren't doing cpu intensive calculus like encoding video, more cpu isn't going to help.

As a side note, having more cpu and/ or hyperthreading might slow down some apps.