SMP Systems

I'm now very courious with double system processors... I have money to spend and I definately going to buy a new system, so I'm thinking wether to spend the extra bucks for a double processor system.

I have $2500-3000.

I know that in games theres not a preformance improvement, or just a little one. But I don't care, because games run perfect if I put a Radeon 9800.

I'm more interested in the performance working in windows, with various applications running, the ones I work with wich include (they are open simoultaneously noramlly):

- MS SQL Enterprise Manager
- MS SQL QueryAnalyzer
- MS Visual Studio.Net
- Macromedia DW, FW and FLASH
- Lot's of internet explorers
- 1 VNC connected to linux and 2 windows remote desktops.
- Of course, Winamp
- Corel Draw 11, sometimes

I have a lcd panel and a crt monitor connected to the pc, so I work quite intensively with those apps, and some times there are moments where I know that not waiting for the processor to do it's job could save me time, and most important I would be comfortable with the work.

Could I have a reasonable performance upgrage that would justify the extra cost of the MP system.

Also what's the best approach, Athlon MP, Intel P4 Xeon or AMD Opteron.

In the double system I would include 2x the memory and a IDE Raid to gain a bit of speed disk.

I put here some prices found at Pricegrabber.com to compare prices.

AMD Opteron
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Opteron 244 (1.8GHz, 1MB, Socket 940) - $700.00
Opteron 242 (1.6GHz, 1MB, Socket 940) - $480.00
Opteron 240 (1.4GHz, 1MB, Socket 940) - $273.00
Dual Motherboard - $450 to $600

Intel P4 Xeon
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Pentium 4 Xeon (3.06GHz, 1MB, 533MHz, Socket 604) - $729.00
Pentium 4 Xeon (2.8GHz, 512KB, 533MHz, Socket 604) - $334.00
Couldn't Find MB prices

Athlon MP
------------
Athlon MP 2200+ (1.8GHz, 256KB, 266MHz, Socket A) - $121.00
Athlon MP 2400+ (2.0GHz, 256KB, 266MHz, Socket A) - $136.00
Athlon MP 2600+ (2.13MHz, 256KB, 266MHz, Socket A) - $177.00
Athlon MP 2800+ (2.25GHz, 512KB, 266MHz, Socket A) - $239.00

TYAN Dual AMD MP, Socket 462, ATX, 4GB DDR-SDRAM, 266MHz FSB - $427.00

for the tasks you mentioned, you should notice an increase in performance if you administer the tasks properly. Certainly, Microsoft SQL server will be very friendly to this environment - I believe you have to split the database up into more than 1 file so that each CPU handles a file.

As far MS Visual Studio.Net , I am not aware of the compilers being able to take advantage of multiple CPUs, but they may. Certainly, if you often have heavy loads on the CPU you would be able to load up one chip and then have processing power available during this time for other tasks like internet surfing and mp3s even if you don't utilise any multi-processor features of MS Visual Studio.Net (if they indeed exist!)

If you were just a games player I would say no, but since you are clearly interested in a great number of other interesting areas of computing, I think you will be able to make use of such a system.