Hi,

I was thinking about buuilding a new dual core AMD system. The motherboard and cpu would be approx $500-$600. I wondered if I was smart enough to get it working as dual core and if the speed would be worth the extra money. I do mainly web, email, DVD burning and video editing with Kino. Burning a DVD makes my machine crawl (yes, dma is on for all drives).

The other night on my 2800 I was burning a DVD, downloading the new newsheaders with Pan, downloading 3-iso's for FreeBSD (Firefox), editing a file with Gimp, compressing a zip file to upload for a friend of mine while I was surfing the web. It was slooow as you might have guessed. The good news is it didn't, and doesn't blue-screen on me. It just keeps chugging along.

I decided to buy an older dual processor machine, on the cheap, to play with. I was, and still am, very surprised by my simple tests. I plan on doing more. I just thought someone here might be interested.

I bought an older Dell Precision 710 with dual 750 Mhz P3s, 1 Gig RAM. SMP kernel installed with apt. Old ATI +-16 Meg RAM mach 64 video card. $165 delivered with CD ROM and 27 Gig HD.

My main machine has an ECS KT-600A motherboard, AMD Sempron 2800, 512 Meg RAM (Kingston Value). Nvidia 256 Meg video card, and a NEC DVD-RX.

Using Debian testing, Gimp, and a 12.7 Meg jpg color graphic (large map).

To open this graphic

2800 2:02 2 minutes 02 seconds avg out of 3 times
SMP 43.69 seconds

The scale this graphic to 10%

2800 1 Minute 37 seconds
SMP 28.65 seconds

I also played with booting diff liveCDs.

FreeBSIE to first select box.

2800 1:44
SMP 1:17

eLive to first selection box

2800 1:08
SMP 1:23

This were simple tests done with a stopwatch. I did nothing else while doing the tests. I was too busy watching the screen. I plan on running POVRAY benchmark in the near future.

I still find it hard to believe that the Dell does as well as it does. Keep in mind I used a standard Sarge install then did an apt-get dist-upgrade (sources testing), then an apt-get install a smp kernel. That's all the tweaking I've done. Also keep in mind that the 2800 runs at 2Ghz but has only 512 Meg RAM. The diff in RAM may explain thie entire test. Next week I'll have 2 Gig in my main machine. We'll find that one out then. It may be that ECS motherboards are very slow?

I hope this helps someone make up their minds on a dual core, or even a dual cpu system. Right now if I had to get rid of one of my machines, it would NOT be the Dell. I'll wait until they work the bugs out of the dual cores before I spend that much. If I find I can build a dual AMD MP system on the cheap, I'll probably upgrade.

BTW: If he had another dual Dell for $165, I'd already own it.

Steve

Why dont you get some gigabyte ethernet cards and holk your two computers together in a network then cluster them together?

Hi whited,

That's the plan. I have an older dual Compaq 3000 server to put in the garage I just had built. I plan on running my network out there and having a small cluster. If it works out well, I'll add more to it.

I will probably stick with the 10/100 network for now though.

Steve

Linux is an multitasking OS. More processors are better than one. Not all programs are written to give out multiple threads. Probably in your tests, one processor is handling the image processing and the other is handling the filesystem processing.

You need PCIe (PCI Express) for that and there is not any network hardware to handle that speed unless you mean gigabit NIC.

Ya gigabit gigabyte whatever

Ya I am playing arround also here is my website
http://home.earthlink.net/~brianbu01/cluster.html

whited,

Way to go!

Couple of questions.

What are you using it for?

Have you run any benchmarks?

BTW: Your cost page needs updated. ;-)

I'll bookmark that page and keep an eye on it. Thanks for sharing.

Steve

Hi Electro,

That is exactly what I was trying to get across. Everyone says "but the programs need to be written for dual cpu for there to be any benefit".

Not true. Each cpu can do a seperate job, or run a seperate program. Still seem to be great benefits to more than one cpu with Linux. The guys at 2cpu.com are right. ;-)

Having said that - I know that when the programs are optimized for dual cpus, they will be even faster.

I'll post some more tests in the next few weeks. I'll have 2 or 3 Gig RAM in my 2800 then.

Steve

Acutally I haven't got it up and running. I have been to busy to get anything else done other than buying parts.