Where can I find a dual AMD processor motherboard?

[ZAmodeo]

I read in one thread about whether or not people leave their computers on or not that mdwatts has a dual AMD processor motherboard. Now I have an urge to buy one for some reason... would a dual 1500 Mhz system have the same speed as a 3 Ghz system? For example, when I play TuxRacer, would half of the processes go to each of the processors, or would only one handle all of them but the other processor would take care of a download running in a backround? I'd like to build a really good gaming system so one with an AGP 8x slot would be nice. For the processor I'd like to go AMD (obviously, although I would consider an Intel processor if anyone knows where I could get a dual motherboard for one of them that would be more cost-effective than an AMD one). Idk much about this kinda stuff so any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[Icarus]

http://www.tyan.com/
makes good dual Athlon boards.

2 1500 does not equil 3000
Read up on SMP, you'll need to custom compile new kernel to run in SMP mode.

SMP has automatic load balancing so it will move processes between CPUs depending which on has less running

Overall it's about a 20-30% system performance increase.

[ZAmodeo]

Is that 20-30% over a 1500 (for example)? Or over a 3000? Also, how does a dual processor 1500 compare to a P4 3.06 w/ Hyper Threading if you know? Thanks for the reply!

[Icarus]

From what I've been reading, the Intel Hyper-threading works simular to a dual processor.

That's 20-30% over the 1500

Most games will not be able to take advantage over the duals (only 1 CPU would be used for the game) but that will leave the other one open for system processes.

Also, SMP can not fork processes to both CPUs...one process, one CPU (things like databases might be an exception)

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by mahdi
Also, SMP can not fork processes to both CPUs...one process, one CPU (things like databases might be an exception) You sure about that one? Because I'm not... ;)

I'm pretty sure that the Linux kernel even lets individual threads inside the same process run on different CPUs. After all, a thread and a process are no different to the kernel -- they're both called tasks in kernel code & comments.

Even if it didn't allow that, every process that's running is the result of a fork() call. The kernel only starts up init, and init starts everything else (using fork(), then exec() calls). So if calling fork() didn't let you run on the other CPU, nothing would ever get to run on it. ;)

EDIT: Oh, I think I see what you were trying to say -- you can't run one process on two CPUs. You can do it with threads, and processes can move between CPUs (unless you set the processor affinity too high), but yeah, normal processes only run on one CPU at a time.

[ph34r]

Dual CPUs won't double your speed. However for doing multiple things at one time (compiling a kernel and playing unreal tournament at the same time), they rock. My dual 450s here at home "feel" faster for many thing than the single 933 on my desk at work, and even "feel" faster for starting multiple apps at once (mozilla and the gimp) than the single 2.4ghz p4 at work...