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Acorp 6A815EPD Motherboard
Date: Thursday, January 20, 2003
Author: Rbreb13
Provided By: None
Page: 4 of 4
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As you can see this will not be a gaming monster!
I also tested this system against some others using Photoshop to see if the dual processors provided any advantage in an application that could utilize them. In rendering a 3D object (a 29.1 MB file) I timed the process and recorded the CPU usage. All settings were set to highest quality.
Dual system 2x800 MHz Processors
CPU usage: 53%
Time: 4 minutes 28 seconds
P-4 system 1.8a @2.424 GHz
TexCPU usage: 100%
Time: 3 minutes 9 seconds
P-4 system 2.53 @ 2.888 GHz
CPU usage: 100%
Time: 2 minutes 33 seconds
AMD system 1800+ @1.63 GHz
CPU usage: 100%
Time: 2 minutes 1 second
As you can see the results are somewhat skewed towards raw processor power. The most surprising was the AMD rig. It is my gaming rig and has very little installed on it so this could have something to do with the result. The only advantage I saw with the dual processors was that the CPU usage was lower and allowed you to do other things while it was working. (I did not do this during the test) So in reality the dual processors are more useful as you can keep working while doing CPU intensive things that would cause a single processor system to freeze up. This is very handy for multi-tasking. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I don't have a comparable slow system to compare with.
Conclusion
For my purposes this was a very good investment. I got a cheap, reliable server out of the deal. Most of the parts I already had and were just gathering dust, so the investment was minimal. I pretty much put the whole system together for under $1000.00. Sure it doesn't have hyper threading like Dual Xeon's do but it also didn't cost $1000's of dollars either. I have had this system up and running for about 2 months now. I have yet to see one single problem. It's reasonably fast, stable and very reliable. One of the main things I like about this system is I can do multiple tasks without the lag I sometimes see in single processor systems. For instance; when I am un-raring files. On my 1.8a P-4 rig (@2.4) I can't even use messenger services as the processor is at 100% use all the time. With the Acorp system I can do other things while un-raring files and the processor usage is only between 50 and 60%.
Pros
Price: at $29.95 this was a real bargain.
Dual Processors
Multi-tasking abilities
Did I mention the price!!
Stability
Reliability
Cons
Pentium III technology
Only 5 PCI slots and no onboard to help with this
512 MB's of memory maximum
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