Dual or Single AMD's

[Night4554]

First off, I will be going with AMD's. I feel that any hit I take in power compared to a Pentium will be worth the cost. I don't have craploads of money to spend, but I do want to get one souped up rig.

So I'm pretty sure the best DP is the Tyan K7X Pro (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/th...xpro_spec.html) But that only supports a 266 Bus, and if I recall correctly, AMD XP's now have 333. Additionally, I don't see what that's rated to speedwise. What the max speed allowed is I mean.

I also know that the best SP AMd MoBo is probably NOT the Tyan Trinity KT400 Pro (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/trinitykt400.html) but it's good enough for comparision purposes. It does support the 333 Bus, but also does not list what the max processor speed supported is.

Basically, I would get better performance shelling out $350 + 2($134) = $718 for the DP 2000 AMD MP's. But is it that much better than shelling out $110 + $201 = $311 for the Trinity and XP 2600? That's a big big price difference, and if I'm not going to notice the power for my my normal (heavy) mutlitasking with internet, Trillian, mIRC and E-Mail; my programming multitasking (C++, *Nix, Web Editors, FTP); AND my hardcore image processing, rendering, and video editing, I don't think I should out out that much cash.

[reboot]

If you're running duals, you're going to be buying the MP chips, not the XP, and currently they only run the 266mhz bus.
A single 2500+ on a good board will easily outperform dual MP2000+'s.
My single 2000+ on an MSI KT4V-L benchmarks faster than dual MP2000+'s on an IWill board, and that's with the identical hard drive, identical video card, and identical RAM.
The fastest chip you can put on the Tyan is the MP2400+ (duals).
I have the feeling that a single XP2600+ would be comparable in speed, at half the cost, if you match up some fast RAM with it.
Save your money, and get a fast single on a good board.
Also don't forget that to take advantage of duals, you need Win2k Pro, or XP Pro.

[glc]

And if you want the fastest board, get a NForce2, not a Via, and throw a bucketload of ram in it instead of spending the money on a dualie.

[HAL9000]

I did a dually AMD, for an outfit here on campus, VIA chipset, while it was fast, we had a bugger of a time getting that thing to finally run stable.

[reboot]

Agreed, the Asus A7N8X and two 512 sticks of PC2700 DDR (for dual channel), with the 2600+ will be one smoking fast system.