Uniprocessor P3 866 vs. Dual Celly 366@550 ???

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 5:43 pm

Hi londahl,

If the new BP6 is a spare computer, I strongly recommend trying BeOS rather than Windows. It will do all the things you mentioned and you won't believe the speed you get from this "proper" media OS!

I use a BP6/BeOS to do:

Web stuff with Mozilla

MP3 Encoding with FlipSide AE

BeOS is _the_ OS to have if your doing multimedia stuff on a dual-CPU PC.

http://www.bebits.com/

http://www.nylonoxygen.com/links.html

Post by **Derek** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 7:18 pm

The dual Celerons will outperform the single PIII in applications that take advantage of multi threading (read: apps that use both processors).

That’s the simplest answer, I guess.

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Tue Nov 12, 2002 1:10 am

londahl,

First, your P-III/866EB has a 133MHz front side bus. You are not likely to be able to run it faster than 110MHz FSB on your BP6.
The end result will be underclocking @ about 110/133x866=716MHz
This will clearly be inferior to the dual 366@550.
If you use a single P-III/1100E CPU - it beats the dual 366@550 easily - despite what Derek says.
I have (3) BP6s that have all been upgraded from dual 366@500+, to single P-III/1100E@1.21GHz. They rock.
It would have to be a rare senario when they don't kick ass over a dual366 rig! Forget about the all the theory on dual CPU multi-thread!
It doesn't show up in the real world like that.
Well, maybe SETI crunching likes dual CPU better - wainting for broadband to see how that goes.

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Tue Nov 12, 2002 9:11 am

My sense of the performance boost is that it seems about 20% faster with a P-III/1100E than Dual Cele1/366@550, running Win-Xp Pro & OfficeXP, Games etc. So, with the 866 OC'ed you will be faster I'd say.

Post by **Derek** » Tue Nov 12, 2002 11:08 am

RRLedford wrote:If you use a single P-III/1100E CPU - it beats the dual 366@550 easily - despite what Derek says.

Oh, right to the heart.

Edit: Where did I compare dual Celerons to the 1100E CPU? Thought we were talking about the 866EB?

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Tue Nov 12, 2002 11:43 am

As far as the question of Dual @550 versus single anything, a fair compare would be with 550+550=1100MHZ of a single.

All I was saying was that my sense of speed was ~20% better when the single CPU had a clock of 2X the Dual CPU clock & the P-III cache of 256K is the same as the 128K+128K of the two Cele CPUs

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Wed Nov 13, 2002 9:01 am

RRLedford wrote:It would have to be a rare senario when they don't kick ass over a dual366 rig! Forget about the all the theory on dual CPU multi-thread!
It doesn't show up in the real world like that.

I must beg to differ. That really does depend on what you use your PC for and how you use it. There are a myriad of uses for PCs out there - not just running one instance of OfficeXP or a single-threaded game. Try saying what you said to a 3DSMax enthusiast, a heavily multi-tasking user, a BeOS freak (such as myself), someone running their own web server, etc.

From what londahl said he wanted to do, it sounds like SMP would be useful to him.

I see the benefit of running SMP every day. Granted, it's not for everyone, but to state as fact that the single CPU route is the right one for everyone just seems wrong to me.

All IMO, of course.

pieroxy · Post by **pieroxy** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 1:14 pm

stephenw22 wrote:I think it depends on what you plan to do.

I totally agree. 2x550 > 1x950, so you have more processing power. In theory. One single application that is designed for on thread only will run way slower on the Dual CPU machine. But if you run a second one, it'll just run as fast as the first one (on the second CPU).

Now most of the video editing programs are optimized for dual CPU machines on the export/convert functions but not on the main UI manipulation... So the percieved speed might be a little lower but the speed of the sssslllloooowwwwww operation of converting/exporting will be faster.

Now if you run a bunch of stuff in parallel (MP3 encoding, P2P, video conversion....) you will probably have better performances on adual CPU machine.

It's all up to what you want to do with the machine. I personnally have a PIII 850 as a desktop and a BP6 2x533 as a server. All my encoding / p2p / heavy stuff are running off of my server and I am pretty peacefull regarding the performances of my web/mail server on this machine. It parallelize better with two CPUs (at least that's what I've noticed).

Now I'm using my PIII 850 as a desktop so my single IE/Mozilla bloated with lots of flash/java/javascript stuff reacts faster.

Post by **Derek** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 1:55 pm

I prefer the dual setup, like I stated earlier.

johnli · Post by **johnli** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 7:01 pm

Well as an indicator I've just upgraded from a dual 533 (no oc) celeron system on my bp6 (which is now becoming a server) to an athlon XP2200+. In general desktop work (outlook, openoffice writer, opera, winamp2/foobar, mirc open) I've noticed no huge performance increase once the apps are running, though the opening times on some are improved somewhat. For gaming and the like the single processor is infinitely better, and in my experience that is always the case even when the MHz ratings are closer together.

Post by **Derek** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 12:33 pm

johnli wrote:For gaming and the like the single processor is infinitely better, and in my experience that is always the case even when the MHz ratings are closer together.

That's not always the case. If you're comparing dual vs. single, using the same processors, I can guarantee you better performance in a dual setup.

Ie. Dual P4 3.06GHz will perform better than a single P4 3.06GHz.

johnli · Post by **johnli** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 7:10 pm

True, I was thinking of when we had a 500MHz P3 compared to my system - forgot about the FSB being 34MHz faster - it always had the slight edge in gaming.
The FSB has a surprising impact on performance, though in this case from the numbers they should be pretty similar.

(mmmm dual P4 3.06GHz...)

Post by **Derek** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:04 pm

johnli wrote:True, I was thinking of when we had a 500MHz P3 compared to my system - forgot about the FSB being 34MHz faster - it always had the slight edge in gaming.
The FSB has a surprising impact on performance, though in this case from the numbers they should be pretty similar.

(mmmm dual P4 3.06GHz...)

Yuppers...

And yuppers again to the "(mmmm dual P4 3.06GHz...)"

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Sat Apr 19, 2003 11:13 pm

hmm

i love my dual rig, i have 2K and in fact 2K will force programs to use both CPU's, i have MBM the dashboard visible on my screen at all times (it's very transparent.

the BP6 is terrific for multi-taskers such as myself

i always have 3 instances of seti (using seti hide and telling it to utilize 3 CPU's (all three instances run at an average of about 6.3%/hr) opera with no less than 5 windows in it open at once, and 2-3 mircs at times, with winamp, yahoo, ICQ, MSN, and AIM all running.. this sytem rocks once you get the right stuff for it

Kuun

pieroxy · Post by **pieroxy** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 2:36 am

kuun wrote:i always have 3 instances of seti (using seti hide and telling it to utilize 3 CPU's (all three instances run at an average of about 6.3%/hr) opera with no less than 5 windows in it open at once, and 2-3 mircs at times, with winamp, yahoo, ICQ, MSN, and AIM all running..

Just to be picky

, I had all that on a mono processor celeron 333 without any problem. I could even run a lot more. All the programs you are citing doesn't consume CPU (except seti but it sets itself as Idle and get on the bg as soon as any process needs cycles)

I bet you anything I can run 5 times your programs on my celeron without problems. In fact memory is a greater factor than CPU in this case.

As I said, just to be picky

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 1:47 pm

actually

i run 3 seti's 24/7

there are no idle times and i don't use the screensaver version

i have dual celerons with 640MB ram (for some reason a 3rd 256 won't work in mine but a 128 will)

i have all those programs running PLUS i play a game called HOMEWORLD: Cataclysm, a complete 3d game, now that game sucks some CPU power,

i usually leave all my programs running and will play any and everygame i have

i usually have to reboot once every 1-2 weeks depends on what im doing, like installing things or the power goes out (the enemy of uptime record seekers)

other than that, this machine runs terrific

another thing

i bet i have the longest boot time of everyone here

i got a 48x24x48 internal burner a 48x cdrom a 4x4x8x USB burner a IDE zip drive 3 50 pin SCSI on an adaptec AVA 1290 2 floppies and a 60GB hdd and a 40GB hdd another PCI usb card a NIC mand an AGP 8mb video card... it takes about 8-10 minutes to boot (booooooooooorrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg)

Kuun

johnli · Post by **johnli** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 4:46 pm

Nah, thats the perfect ammount of time to go make a decent espresso (or maybe a double)

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 6:06 pm

lol

that is very true

24seven · Post by **24seven** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 8:42 am

oopsy double post. <delete if you like>

24seven · Post by **24seven** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 8:43 am

I think the easyest answer to this is.... try it your self. If you have both the computers/ or will have, then just build them up and try them, maybe use the same hardware in each to make it fair and use it a few months, then swap.

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 8:07 pm

yeah

i have been very happy with my BP6

but i am moving on to much faster systems.. systems that the BP6 cannot compete with...

but fear not my BP6 whall not perish..

i will take it down for a time and perform the capacitor replacement on both of my BP6's

and then build a dual dual rig

gonna try and stuff both my BP6's into my current case and create a server cube

and slowly add harddrives to the cube

anywho

Kuun

fazer · Post by **fazer** » Wed Oct 29, 2003 9:48 am

if i may jump in here...

what are the temperature comparisons between the 366@550, and an an 866mhz??