Letter of the Day:

Mike Schmitt from Wisconsin asks:

Does a dual processor setup, like the BP6 and 2xCeleron 366s have any increasing effect in Windows 98. I thought that I read once somewhere that one processor could per say take on the CDR task of burning, while using Photoshop, or something else with the other. Is this true, or just lies?

The next question goes along with the first then. I am looking at getting a new motherboard and CPU for right now, until the new Coppermines and Athlons get straightened out and priced down. What should I get? Right now I have a 300a that can reach 504mhz most of the time without problems. I have a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (soon to be something better when the next-gen boards are in good perspective). I was thinking about the Abit BP6, or BE6, (I have a BX6r2 now), or a Soyo +III or +IV board. I would then go with either Celeron 366(s) or a PIII 450. Are the SSE instructions any use right now?

I am a college student at UW Madison, so I am on a LAN and play Half-Life most of the time. Would any of this help before my next upgrade (around Christmas or March). Right now I have 512 MB of Crucial Tech PC100 SDRAM, and would go down to 384 if I needed to (available slots on mobo). I also have a CD-Rom, DvD-Rom, CD-R, and IBM 7200 RPM hard drive, so I am using all of my IDE connectors. I will soon be getting either a new hard drive (larger), or another one (cheaper solution). With another hard drive I would need more IDE connectors, or a mobo with ATA66 built in.

I know this is a lot to swallow, but see if you can tell me what you think. I would like the best performance for the lowest price, but I also would like it to be easy to apply to a new i820 chipset or Athlon chipset / CPU combination in the future.

Thank you very much,
Mike Schmitt (e-mail address withheld)

Win9X doesn't do Dualies

Hey Mike,
Good questions! You will not see any benefit at all from running a dual CPU system on Windows98, because Win98 does not support dual CPUs. You would have to run an SMP capable OS such as Linux, BeOS, WinNT, or the Up and coming Win2K to see any SMP performance gains. Sure, you can install and use Win9X on a dual processor system, but the second CPU will just sit there and twiddle it's thumbs or take a nap while the primary processor does all the work. The second processor will have nothing to do because Win9X just doesn't do SMP.