New Dual Core

[dabaerman]

well, it's new to me anyhoo. just joined in with an A64 X2 3800 939, Biostar
GForce 6100 and one stick of ram at the moment(1gig). in the process of
feeling things out.
I am so new to dual core that I am not familiar with the process of involving both cores
and making sure they are both working. in this case they will be folding.
point me to a fac on dual core or take me thru the steps. I'll pay attention.

Ron

[mookydooky]

Both cores are working all the time. Typically though, since most programs are single threaded, they just use one core. The thing is though you'll have a dozen or two processes running at any given moment with about half a dozen using up CPU power. A good OS will divide these up tasks up evenly between the two cores.

The one thing you have to know is that unless you have Win2K or above, the OS won't be able to run multi-core CPUs properly.

If you're folding with the box, make sure you use the SMP beta of the FAH client.

BTW, maxing out both cores will create some serious heat.....

[aztec61]

Originally Posted by mookydooky

BTW, maxing out both cores will create some serious heat.....

But that's what it's all about - getting rid of the heat to go muy fast.

[Samuknow]

I have mine x2 3800 @ 2700. Running FAH with water it only sees about 33C max.

These little things are quite quick with a little over clock.

[dsio]

A little water never goes astray either. With the Kandalf LCS on it, I couldn't get a 3600+ above room temp +3C. Thats where the fun begins

[aztec61]

Actually, I think we all need to get back to what we like to do best, which is: overclocking the snot out of the chips we can get for least $$. Most of those on the CPU side have been AMD.

[Samuknow]

I love taking a cheap CPU and driving the crap out of it. This is how I started in this. Never really strayed. I HATE paying a lot of money for a CPU. I would rather cheap it and clock it.

[dabaerman]

when you talk about maxing out both cores, 100% on both cores is still 50/50. stock, on air
they both (boxes) get very hot. my plan is to use my 6 water cooling cases after selling off
the single core boards/cpus. I still believe that a fully integrated micro ATX mb is the way to go.
there are very few of those mb's that offer strong oc'ing features and I
must have them!! the other part of the equation is the cpu. with the 2 gig AM2 with 2X1mbcache reasonably priced.
I just have to be careful with my lunch money and I might just make it
happen.

Ron

Ron

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by mookydooky

The one thing you have to know is that unless you have Win2K or above, the OS won't be able to run multi-core CPUs properly.

Err.......unless I am missing something, ANY NT-based OS should be able to handle multi-core just fine. You have to be running XP or above to take advantage of hyper-threading, though. 2k and NT see a hyper-threaded CPU as multiple CPUs and actually run SLOWER than if you configure the BIOS without hyper-threading support.

None of the DOS-based 9x OSen know how to handle multi-core (or multi-cpu) or hyper-threading, though. You get one CPU, period.

[mookydooky]

Originally Posted by gizmo

Err.......unless I am missing something, ANY NT-based OS should be able to handle multi-core just fine.

You're right of course. Maybe some people are running NT 4. Anything before that would have the the Win 3.11 WFW interface I believe, which was a wicked bad interface...