With celeron 400 chips costing $100 or so it would not be too expensive to put
together a dual 400 mhz system. Would GPL benefit from this type of CPU power?
Wow. Imagine. Two 400 mhz processors and GPL. Great idea.
WIn98 does not support SMP, and unless the game is written with SMP multithread
support, running on NT isn't going to do anything, either.
One thing folks often seem to misunderstand (not saying you do) about
multiprocessor systems is that they don't combine to make a faster system, they
really just do more of the same thing at the same speed. In other words, two
400Mhz processors don't make an 800Mhz system any more than pouring one glass of
106F degree water into another glass of 106F degree makes the water boil.
~daxe
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GPL supports NT now minus a feature 99.9% of the public would
deem necessary, i.e. controller support. Just launch the PapyCPU
service before running GPL.
It isn't much fun to drive but it is quite useful for debugging purposes
if you are inclined to do that sort of thing.
Word on the street is that the upcoming patch will indeed fully support
NT by adding much needed NT controller support. Additionally SMP
will be directly supported by GPL although the details of which have
yet to be disclosed, i.e. what runs in what thread.
My only concern is the usual NT sound lag problems. Windows 2000
should take care of that though.
Depends on the implementation and where the current bottlenecks
are.
For odd reasons I've never quite fathomed 3dfx graphics are slightly
faster on NT so even the current version minus SMP support runs
faster (albeit only an imperceptible amount so).
- George
Jan Winkel
No, Win 98 does not support dual processors. Win NT does. And the
upcoming 1.1 patch for GPL does run on NT (*). And it does run on dual
processor NT systems (at least NT5, I don't think we've ever tried it
on a dual processor NT4 system). And it does use both processors. I
imagine it would also run on a 4 processor system, but, given the way
the game is architected, it won't likely use more than two at a time.
And on the class of processor that one would bother to configure a dual
CPU machine with, GPL isn't often CPU bound, so there's not a huge
benefit to having two of them (unless you're running without 3D
acceleration).
(*) NT4 w/SP3 and NT5 Beta 2. Our "Generic" joystick driver is not
supported on NT. NT4 only supports DirectX 3, not DirectX 5, so
controller support is further limited on NT4 to those devices that the
standard Win32 "joyGetPos" function recognizes. Plain old joysticks up
to 4 axes and 4 buttons should work OK. Fancy digital, serial or USB
controllers are probably right out. If Microsoft ever releases DirectX
5 for NT4, such controllers should work fine (though I don't believe
they have any plans to do this).
Randy
>>With celeron 400 chips costing $100 or so it would not be too expensive to put
>>together a dual 400 mhz system. Would GPL benefit from this type of CPU power?
>AFIK you can't use Celeron processors in a Dual CPU system. Not right
>out the box, that is. You need to modify those Celeron's to get it
>working.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/supermicrotmr006/default.asp
--
| "Instead of letting the moon be the
Bill Mette | gateway to our future, we have let
Enteract, Chicago | it become a brief chapter in our
Scott Sanford
Chris
Unless the game is rewritten to use multithreading, the second CPU would just
sit there with nothing to do. The operating system doesn't just 'decide' which
threads to send where.
~daxe
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However, according to Randy Cassidy, with genuine P II or P III
processors, and running NT, GPL will benefit from a Dual CPU
system....
Remco
<Hi George - I'm enjoying your Voodoo3 patch, by the way. Great work.>
For two processors to give you a real performance gain, the code would have
to have been written with the CPU intensive work being run in concurrent
threads. Not being a game / multimedia programmer, I have no idea if this
is how it's done.
Dave Ewing
Not only do they have to be the same SPEED and breed (P2,
Celeron, etc), but they should the EXACT same stepping if you want to
avoid HORRIBLE potential problems with timing over the long run....
Therefore it's best to buy them at the same time from the SAME place.
Gunner