I'm building a 64bit linux box and I was wondering if it would be worth it to go with dual opterons @ 1.4GHz or a single athlon 64 on a socket 754 board at 2.0GHz? The dual cpu system will only cost a little more and I was wondering if I would see better performance from the opterons. I game alot, encode video, rip mp3's encode music and I'm into photo editing. . .lots of digital media stuff. My main concern is having a 2nd cpu that just sits there. . . I know SuSE 9.0 (the OS I'll use) utilizes dual processors and 64 bit environments but for 32bit software and other programs like say WinXP is it going to be as if I only have one 32bit cpu @ 1.4GHz?? Also would hardware like this cause more compatablilty issues than its worth?? The idea of 2 64bit cpu's is awsome and I cant wait for the 64bit UT2004 (which will be linux native). Basically I want to build the most powerful system I can with all the case mods and everything ya know. . go all out. I wanted to ask if it would be more of a pain than a joy to have.. .any advice is appreciated.

If you are going to be running a number of programs at the same time, or have a program that is written to take advantage of multiple CPUs, then you would be better off with the dual. Most programs nowadays aren't written to be split up onto multiple CPUs. So, while gaming, one CPU would prob'ly be sitting idle.

It might actually be worse than that... Sometimes you run into a ping-pong effect where the OS bounces the single program back and forth between the two CPUs, so it wastes processing time with each switch.

Unless you are running a server with multiple users, a single, really fast CPU would prob'ly be better.