Question

how many cpu's can xp manage?

Asked by: j2023

how many cpu's can xp manage.
I noticed online when i was looking for a motherboard that some motherboards can go to 4-5 cpu's my question is how many cpu's can xp home manage? you would need to have a server OS or would you be able to use a standard OS ?

would a server OS be much more differnt to use than say windows xp?

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Asked On
2004-05-18 at 01:25:34ID20992903
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many

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Operating Systems Miscellaneous

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Adobe Type Manager

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Answers

 

by: smallpygmyPosted on 2004-05-18 at 02:14:40ID: 11096311

Windows XP Home can only use 1 CPU.  XP Professional can take 2.  windows Server 2003 on the other hand can support more processors.  The standard edition can support up to 4 processors, the enterprise edition can support up to 8 processors and the DataCentre edition can handle up to 64 processors!  Windows server 2003 is a Server OS though and is expensive for a home system.  Very few of the applications you will use in the home will have support for multiple processors.

 

by: andrewfxPosted on 2004-05-18 at 03:54:01ID: 11096836

Please review this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/svrxpser_intro.mspx

Search for the word "multiprocessing" which refers to the number of CPU's an operating system can support, sometimes it is also called "symmetric multiprocessing".

This page shows the number for each type of OS, including Windows XP pro and various server editions. Even if your motherboard can take more, it won't do you any good if the OS can't handle it.

In that page, if it says "two-way" or "eight-way" or whatever, that just means the number of CPU's.

Having multiple CPU's can speed up your work, but, it won't do you any good unless the software is specifically made to use all the CPU's. For example, Adobe PhotoShop can use multiple CPU's and it can make working with images a lot faster. But with something like say, Microsoft Word, or many games, it doesn't use the extra CPU's and doesn't help at all.

For businesses running very heavy traffic web sites, having servers with multiple CPU's would be useful.

Good luck!!

AndrewFX

 

by: SupercomputerukPosted on 2004-05-18 at 06:12:41ID: 11097765

Has anyone seen the new HP Serverm, the one with 8 AMD 64s in and a total of 64Gig of ram, that would make a great web server. who agrees?

 

by: Phill_upsonPosted on 2004-05-18 at 07:14:58ID: 11098346

Possibly, depends on the size of the pipe to the server :) a 486 can do the business with a 56k plugged in!

As for the 1st Q, rather than going down the SMP route you'd be better off with a Pentium 4 HyperThread model (abbreviated to HT).  These chips make a go at behaving like a dual processor machine but because its still a single processor being addressed, all applications support it by default, the chip itself handles the extra work.  The other thing to bear in mind with multiple processors is the HAL changes which requires a rebuild of the machine (E.g. reinstall windows from scratch and then load your apps etc...) whereas an HT chip from Intel doesn't.

good luck

 

by: andrewfxPosted on 2004-05-18 at 11:55:37ID: 11101169

How cool - my very first "Accepted Answer"! Thanks, j2023. :-)

andrewfx

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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