Dual Processors

[ASRAAM]

I am about to start building a new system and am probably going to use mid speed Athlon with some additional clocking. I do recall reading an article ages ago about using 2 celerons on the same motherboard. Has anyone got experience of this, did it work, how fast was the system etc, and which motherboard/processor combo works best?

[Charliey]

There are several dual cpu motherboards avaliable for celerons and P3s. Note: with a dual system, you need to run either windows 2000, or linux to make use of both cpus. Win 95/98/ME cannot use the second processor. Abit makes some dual boards, and i think tyan does too.

[Floppyman]

Abit, Tyan, Asus, MSI, Epox, all make dual cpu boards. Currently Celeron II's are not smp capable. fc-pga PIII's are smp capable if they have the cB0 stepping. As as I know all slot PIII's are smp capable. I'm currently building a dual slot PIII system using the Tyan Tiger 100 motherboard and 2 PIII 550E's. Check out this site for more info on dual cpus: http://www.2cpu.com HTH and lemme know if you have more q's.

[mosquito]

I have an Abit BP6 with 2 Celeron 500s @ 562Mhz. Running Windows NT and Windows 2000. It's pure bliss, I prefer this setup over my PIII 800EB to do development. For Gaming, the 800 is better. But I usually use my dual setup to Serve Games, and the 800 to play games.

Dual CPU = better for multitasking (running a lot of applications at the same time.) + For graphic design (3D studio max, Photoshop,...)
Single CPU = better for Gaming (only running one app.)

So to play games you better buy a Faster single cpu system. For work, a slower dual cpu is nice.

[Toaster]

As mentioned before, the "Cel-mine" is not yet SMP compliant. The early Celerons are however.
The rest of the world is working with the "cel-mines" to see "why" they arn`t SMP compliant. Under Linux 6.1 and up, SMP is installed by default if Linux detects multiple CPUs.
The result is a speed increase of about 45% on average.
The price of the 1st gen PIII`s is falling fast as are dual-BX boards. Its not uncommon to see dual BX boards for about the 120 buck mark and the PIII-450 (katmai) often runs well at 600mhz. These CPU`s are now below the 100 buck mark.

[ASRAAM]

Thanks very much for all the replys guys. The Windows 2000 and 2processor route is very tempting but the thought of all those games on my shelf shouting play me, play me is probably too much.

To be honest I had forgotten the bit about W98 not supporting dual processors. A little knowledge is definitely a dangerous thing!