Dual Processors in W2k Professional

J

JustAGuy

Weaksauce
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Jun 29, 2004
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Alright, I know that Windows 2000 supports 2 processors in multi-threaded applications, but I was wondering if anyone out there has specific experience with running a dually under Win2k. Was there a noticable difference between one processor of that speed? Are most standard computer apps multithreaded to take advantage of two processors?

- JustAGuy
 
There's a very noticeable difference. The OS, and individual programs, are much more responsive while the system is under load (much the same as a P4 with HT).

Individual program improvement, though, is generally negligible. Few things outside of the server arena are written for SMP.
 
I built my first dual system with W2k.
I had 2x AMD Athlon MP 1800+.
In terms of single program performance, there was no noticable difference between a single processor and SMP configuration. However, the multitasking that I was able to do was incredible. I was able to run a game, burn CDs, transfer files via P2P, and have Trillian going at the same time. Definately a great OS for SMP.
Check out Microsoft.com, though....they are offering a completely free 180 day evaluation of 2k3 Enterprise Server. I am pretty sure the SMP handling is superior....plus its an insanely great OS in my opinion.
 
What's the point of running a Server OS on a Desktop/Worstation system?
 
Order said:
I am pretty sure the SMP handling is superior....plus its an insanely great OS in my opinion.
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Totally a placebo. The SMP between XP and 2k3 is practically the same, with the exception that the toggle-able choice for "background processes" and "applications" is defaulted to "background processes."

With a 2k/XP/2k3 machine running dual processors, I would say that the difference would be noticable enough in regular use to see a difference, but not great enough to merit more than a 20-30% increase in overall performance on user-level applications. For some programs like Photoshop or heavy rendering programs that take advantage of multithreading, the difference is often more noticable. For playing games and checking e-mail, however, the gains are not as great as the idea of "running dualie" implies.

This isn't to say don't do it. As a matter of fact, if you can afford it go right ahead. With dual cores coming in the near future it's a good bet that multithreading applications will be on the rise, which can only mean good things for older systems running dual processors in the long run (though the handles will be slightly different, given a shared bus for dual cores).
 
GreNME said:
...though the handles will be slightly different, given a shared bus for dual cores.
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Of course, you go back to old duallies, and they'll be shared bus, too. For that matter... have Xeons gotten away from that yet? I've not paid much attention to modern SMP rigs.
 
Totally a placebo. The SMP between XP and 2k3 is practically the same, with the exception that the toggle-able choice for "background processes" and "applications" is defaulted to "background processes."
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Right but he is just using regular 2k, not XP.
 
I have seen my fair share of technical computing workstations in the business world...
Most were dual Xeon & Quadro graphic card Hewlett Packards; used for Auto Cad and SCADA satellite image manipulation workstations.
 
Order said:
Right but he is just using regular 2k, not XP.
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That is a good point. I agree.

lomn75 said:
Of course, you go back to old duallies, and they'll be shared bus, too. For that matter... have Xeons gotten away from that yet? I've not paid much attention to modern SMP rigs.
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I think it depends on the Xeon board, but I could have sworn they each have their own bus going into the northbridge. But yeah, it's not going to be much different from dualies, it just is going to be using a few of the same transistors on the chip as well as sharing the bus.
 
Cruise with a dual Xeon 3.4 Ghz PCI Express at work. A 3Ghz HT P4 at home.

The dual procs are very nice. The system stays very responsive when it is heavily loaded, like rendering video and such. However, at home I have been downloading from the net at 3 Mbps while playing HL2, and HL2 played fine. Having dual procs would not have sped up either of those tasks. Now, if I render video, HL2 does take a performance hit, and the video render takes a lot longer. Only so many instructions to go around.

Unless you live by "time is money", I have a hard time justifying the much greater cost for two procs versus one HT. If it was just 100 or 200 bucks, then fine. But, it is usually more like a 700-900 dollar delta.

Of course, two procs are definitely more "manly"!!
 
I used Windows2000 with a dual P3@1000 cpus and 1GB of pc133 ram, worked great..i really miss that box :(

OldMX
 
GreNME said:
I think it depends on the Xeon board, but I could have sworn they each have their own bus going into the northbridge. But yeah, it's not going to be much different from dualies, it just is going to be using a few of the same transistors on the chip as well as sharing the bus.
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All Xeons are shared bus. It has nothing to do with the motherboard, it's a part of the architecture.
 
the only duals that dont share memory are the dual opterons and only then on a numa enabled board and with a numa aware os. Which unless linux supports it, is only winxp x86-64, win2k3 enterprise, and datacenter variants.



EDIT: Some linux distros support it, of course it you compile your own kernal you can add the support.
 
Numa Explained




The Wildcard - NUMA
NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) is a feature which is brought up quite a lot when talking about the AMD Opteron CPU, especially for high-end workstations and servers. Really though, what is NUMA, and what does it do? Why is it so important?

NUMA is a technology which was originally designed for supercomputers and render farms, allowing CPU's communicate with memory over multiple bus paths. For example, in a simple two processor NUMA-aware system, CPU number one could access data on CPU number two's memory banks, and vice versa. In a non-NUMA dual CPU configuration, each processor can only directly access memory information in its own memory banks. NUMA technology is a key selling components for four and eight way Opteron systems, but since the Opteron CPU's use a shared architecture between all of their models, NUMA technology is available all the way down to two-way Opteron systems (Opteron 100 series processors cannot use NUMA).

In short, NUMA allows for systems with multiple processors communicate better. It can lead to higher performance and much higher peak bandwidth numbers. In fact, only a NUMA-aware system configuration will be able to achieve the peak memory bandwidth numbers which are capable from Opteron CPU's. We've gotten quite a few requests from readers of our previous Opteron articles to test out the NUMA abilities of these processor. So, we set out to do just that.

In order to setup a NUMA-enabled Opteron system, one needs two Opteron CPU's, at least two DDR memory modules (one or more for each memory bank), a motherboard which has dual independant memory bus connections (check the page three for a list), and a NUMA-aware operating system. If any one of these elements is left out of the equation, you will not be able to enjoy the benefits of a NUMA-aware system.

As NUMA technology works on both the hardware and software side, the operating system must be NUMA aware. Currently, the only available options are Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, Windows Server 2003 Data Center, and scattered Linux variants. Luckily, the upcoming variants of Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition are both NUMA-aware. Once these operating systems are released, we should be able to see NUMA deployments on a much larger scale. It's also rumoured that Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system will have NUMA support all the way down to the consumer level, but that has yet to be confirmed. We used the publically available version of Windows XP 64-bit Edition for our NUMA testing. While the operating system is still in a beta form, its NUMA implimentation appears to be fully functional.
 
Order said:
Its free and a good learning experience.
Click to expand...

Not really. Unless you're actually using it as a server, there's no significant differences between XP and 2003. The 2 most noticable things are that it wants you to explain -why- you're shutting down/rebooting and that IE, by default, won't load any webpages. If you're setting up server services, I can see it being worthwhile, but if not it's just allowing you to say "yeah... I used server 2003... kinda..."
 
You still get the chance to do whatever you want with it should the desire arise. Should someone BUY a copy of a server OS for their personal computer? No. Should they take advantage a deal that lets them use an incredible OS for half a year at zero cost to them? Yes, especially if they are interested in how the higher-end Microsoft products run and what features they have available.
Remember, you can disable those "server-only" features like explaining why you are restarting, changing the CPU and paging priorities to applications rather than background processes, get a chance to use a copy of Windows without a lot of extraneous BS already activated like Media Player and Internet Explorer, etc. Of course its not practical to spend the money but if he has a dual CPU system as his desktop he is obviously an enthusiast and would more than likely like to experiment.

PS: Anyone that uses a server OS on their desktop just to say they are running a server OS on their desktop should be slain. If that was your reason for concern, then I wholeheartedly agree with you.
 
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