Dual Processors (not necessarily Linux)

[toddle6998]

This question isn't specific to Linux, but to PC hardware in general. How do you have dual processors? Is there just two socket spots on the motherboard? I've heard of dual processors but never seen them.

And onto the Linux part, is it worth having two? Is it difficult to set up an L-Box to run dual processors? I was thinking of (may cash be damned) using two 1.6Ghz chips when I make a new box next summer.

[Icarus]

www.tyan.com makes some good dual MB's in many different flavors (Intel/AMD)
They have two sockets on the board for the processors...Linux was made for dual CPUS :D
You might need to recompile the kernel to take advantage of it...
http://www.tyan.com/products/assets/images/Tg_MP.gif
TigerMP Athlon board

[mdwatts]

Running a Asus A7M266-D with dual AMD 1800 MP's.

My distro (Caldera) defaults to the SMP kernel.

[Xsecrets]

Dual Processor support I not hard in linux, as for the performance increase it depends on what you do with your computer and how you do it. most games are not very well threaded so they will not see a huge increase. lots of server apps are so they will also if you want to play music while playing a game or encode an mp3 at the same time you'll see a huge increase in performance because each task will be handled by a different processor.

[bwkaz]

Although notice that even if things like CD ripping are handled by another processor, they still take up the various buses (PCI, IDE, etc.) for some time. These buses don't get duplicated with dual processors.

And UT2K3, for one, does its sound processing in a second thread, so it does benefit some from duallies. I believe there's one other thing it does in a third thread as well, but I don't remember what it is.

[x_Ray]

I also have the A7M266-D, with mp 1600's.
I use Gentoo, and it runs like a champ. SMP and linux is easy as enabling it in your kernel.