Dual Processor pentium III Questions

[Fantasma]

Hello people

I was wondering if I could take a few minutes of your time, I have
a couple of questions and I would love to have your feedback.

First, I must say I am very disappointed of the Pentium 4, I have
read many negative comments about it, it was hard for me to believe
them, but after many encoding sessions, I feel that maybe I made a big mistake purchasing a P4 1.7 at Gigahertz.

I have been planning to assemble a dual processor machine using two pentiums III running at 1.0 Gigahertz each one, could a machine like this beat a pentium 4 ?.

Also, does Divx come with smp support?

Please, some light on this subject will be much appreciated.

[Rick83]

Hi!

The P4 with 1,7 GHz is a Willamette, this means it´s got the old core (this CPUs get hot!) and only 256 kb cache - the newer Northwood P4s have got the new core (they are really cool and good to overclock) and the cache is now 512 kb big. That makes it faster. So if you buy a P4 1,6 GHz Northwood and overclock it to 2,1 GHz (133 MHz FSB), you will se the power of the P4. ;-)
Okay, your motherboard must support the high frontside bus.

Bye, Rick

[MaTTeR]

@Fantasma

If your seriously thinking of a dual setup then IMO it would be much cheaper and faster to go with an AMD dual rig. I have a dual Asus/1600 rig and a dual PIII850/Tyan setup. If you really want some serious encoding speed then SMP is the only way to go. Yes, using Vdub and AVS along with XviD or DivX you'll be using both CPUs.

Check out 2cpu.com for all the dualie info you need.

[Fantasma]

Thank you very much for your comments.

I will look deep in my pockets to proceed :)