yeah Im building a new pc and I was wondering if its good to have duel cpu things like this one http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-PRECISION-...ameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting I mean could I have two quad core with 12gigs of memory I IDK can it run on one cpu and is there a advantage to it rather then having one cpu
What you're referring to is known as symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). If you're interested in the details, you can read about it here. It wasn't too long ago that if you wanted multiple cores, you had to install multiple processors. As a result, most workstation and server motherboards were capable of holding more than one processor. In the last few years, multiple cores are now being built into one processor. You can still purchase a motherboard for multiple processors, but there are several things that you must consider. 1. Not all processors are capable of being installed in a multiple processor motherboard. In your ebay example, that board was specifically for Xeon processors. 2. Not all operating systems can take advantage of multiple processors. For example, Windows XP home can see multiple cores, but it won't utilize multiple processors. 3. A multiple processor system requires more power than a multiple core system. Obviously, you would also need multiple CPU coolers. 4. A multiple processor system usually has different memory requirements. It may be as simple as requiring ECC or registered memory, or it may have a separate bank of memory for each processor. I'm sure there are several other things that I've left out. Most likely, unless you're building a server, you can simply stick with a single multiple core processor and be just fine. Until all applications are truly utilizing the multiple cores, you won't see a huge difference in performance. In fact, some speed tests will perform better with a single core processor than a quad core processor.
