Dual CPU question (long and complex)

[Caplax40]

Okay computer guys, here's we go. I've never dealt with a dual-cpu system before, thus my question(s):


Me and two friends are getting a place together. What we want is a game server that will double as a media center. Here's the scenario we're thinking:

The computer is hosting a game online, pretty much 24/7/365. Person X comes in and wants to watch a DVD, watch/RECORD TV, or play on the XBox or PS2. Can this be accomplished?

My knowledge about dual-processing systems is limited and I am curious if it's possible to allocate certain apps to run on a given processor. Like this:

Computer Game runs on Processor 1
All other functions run on Processor 2
Both at the same time

More:

We also want to have remote access for the system from our individual computers. Thus a wifi network has been called into play, and I assume XP Pro for each PC other than the media/game center.

Finally,

To accomplish this goal we were thinking a computer with these general specs:

Dual-cpu motherboard
Two AMD Opteron's
ATI All-in-Wonder video card
Healthy dose or RAM
Good sound card for surround-sound setup
Windows Media Center w/remote

Am I accurate in the WMC OS? Or should it be XP Pro?

That's all the complexities I can think of right now. More later if they come up. Thanks in advance guys!!

[zondaland]

I'm running a hyperthreaded setup which essentially runs as a dual CPU. What you can do is from the Windows Task Manager (ctr+alt+del) under the preocesses tab right click on whatever process you want and then select "set affinity" this allows you to assign a process to just one processor. However some processes (I think they are system processes) cannot have this setting changed. The default setting is for all processes to be able to go through either process. Hope that helps a little.

[SFDMALEX]

Well it depends on the game. Some dedicated server exes dont take up a lot of CPU resources.

When I play a video on my P4 it takes up 13-7-18 % of the cpu, this is 5 widnows open, msn, firewall and video playing.


Depending on how many resources the dedi server hogs, I dont think you even need a dual cpu system.

[Caplax40]

You guys think a high-end P4 w/HT would do just as fine as the dual cpu's? The game(s) we'd be running are Battlefield 2 and/or Counterstrike, more I'm sure will follow.

[5vz-fe]

My vote goes to AMD 3800+ x2 (dual core) with lots of ram. Than go ask Thamar how to overclock it =)

Go with the XP pro, also get a fast harddrive.

[RC45]

You will be dissapointed with Dual, Quad or 8 way CPU performance as a multi-interface system.

Multi-threaded, multi-cpu aware OS's and applications are really geared towards serving server style applicaitons.

What you are looking for is user interface responsiveness of 100% dedication to user interface requests as well as 100% responsiveness for server interface requests.

Doesn't quite end up working this way - a server served thread can be in a wait state as it gets in line to get it's slice of CPU - and all this happens without any real impact on responsiveness, considering all the latencies involved in a server serving environment.

Transactions still get serverd and the "user" whether a person or application doesn't really notice this latency.

A user on the console interacting with the system sees these wait states as pauses - something we as users are not prepared to deal with.

Remember, server OS's are actually architected to serve server threads of equal priority before user interface threads of equale priority (even in a multi CPU environment - it is still really just a really well managed menuing and scheduling system) while workstation OS"s are architected to serve user interface threads of equal priority before server threads of the same priority.

This is why Workstations have better user interface response that servers.. ;)

Been there done that - got the T-Shirt - two HT systems will server you much better than one gargantuan sytem :)