Multiprocessor Systems: The More the Merrier?

When outfitted with only 64MB of RAM, the memory hungry Windows NT refused to give AnandTech's upgraded Dual Processor system even a remotely noticeable advantage over its single processor counterpart in the benchmarks. As you'll quickly notice later on, RAM size does play a fairly large role in the benefit of a multiprocessor system. For a system with 64MB of RAM, regardless of what sort of professional you are, as long as you're running Windows NT, the clear upgrade path is a faster processor, a dual processor system won't give you much of a performance boost if any.

With 128MB of RAM, we can finally start to see some performance differences across the board. Under MicroStation SE, the performance of the Dual Pentium II 300 rose a full 34% while the performance of both single processor systems remained the same. CAD professionals will definitely appreciate the added memory size if they're using multiprocessor systems, due to the complexity of their designs, however the winner in the Computer Aided Design and Drafting category is once again the single processor Pentium II 450. The raw CPU power of a single 450 managed to outshine AnandTech's Dual Pentium II 300 system.

Moving along to Image Editing with Adobe Photoshop 4.01, the Dual Processor system is finally showing its muscle by taking a 4% performance lead over the Pentium II 450 system. Image editing professionals and graphics artists will definitely appreciate the responsive rendering and filtering times a dual processor system can produce, however as any graphics artists will be able to tell you, without enough RAM, the amount of CPU power you have when editing a 20MB+ image file (as the tests AnandTech conducted proved) is useless.

Under Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, AnandTech's upgraded Dual Processor system took the spotlight once again with a 60% performance improvement over the base Single Pentium II 300 system, and a 17% improvement over the new Pentium II 450 system. Depending on what type of user you primarily are, the performance improvements the second processor offers may or may not be what you're looking for. In any case, the $200 investment of a second 300MHz Pentium II managed to outweigh the performance increase a $430 Pentium II 450 upgrade offered, not to mention the added cost of a new BX motherboard versus an older Dual LX board.