[G4] Dual 450 Processors

[Andrew T. Lynch]

Another thing to remember is that at any one time, your mac is trying 
to run many things - open a terminal window and enter ps -aux.  
Swapping between these processes takes time, and if you have two 
processors, you may swap less.

If you are using one monolithic application, and it is not MP aware, 
you may not see much difference.  If you are like me, you have a whole 
bunch of things running all the time, and I feel that the MP system 
helps a lot.  As I type this, I am printing, amadeus 2 is splitting a 
two gig audio file, mail is running, and I have quicktime player up.  
Even on my 3+ year old 450DP, everything is running very smoothly.

-Drew

On Feb 8, 2004, at 8:00 AM, Alex wrote:

>
> On Sunday, Feb 8, 2004, at 09:04 Canada/Eastern, sr ferenczy wrote:
>
>> actually, if an application is not programmed to take advantage of 
>> having multiple threads, even os x cannot distribute the task to a 
>> different processor.
>
> True. What OS X does, however, is balance the load (app + all 
> background processes) on the two processors, which does provide a 
> performance benefit. As I wrote previously, "an application must be 
> native and multithreaded to benefit fully" from SMP.
>
>> i always take tests with a grain of salt (my real world experience is 
>> all i worry about) [...]
>
> Agreed. But let's not lose sight of the starting point. The issue is 
> not, "Is DP better than SP?" -- I don't think anyone would argue with 
> the answer, "In most cases, yes" -- but, "Does 450+450=900MHz". IMHO, 
> yes, a DP Mac will perform better than an SP Mac, especially with 
> applications which take advantage of SMP. (Note, for instance, in the 
> benchmarks at the site you recommended, that Bryce 5's performance was 
> only marginally better.) But, no, that is not a guarantee that you can 
> run an application requiring 500Mhz minimum -- and Bryce 5 shows you 
> why not.
>
>> [...] the VT G5 cluster gets around 60% of the theoretical output, 
>> and they have 2200 processors (think of the over head on that)
>
> Does the VT cluster run Mac OS X -- and is it really relevant to our 
> issue?
>
> f
>
>
>
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