What I can tell you...
Is that scheduling in Windows is broken, severely.
Linux will definately switch processors on single processor written apps.
I have seen various estimates... but for me, the real test was putting together a 3 machine - Windows 2000 Advanced Server Cluster in VMware on Linux.
The machine had 4 processors, 4GB of Memory, U160 SCSI, 1Gbit SX-fiber ethernet.
I setup one machine in VMware, then just copied it, and since the EULA Microsoft never envisioned Multiple Instances of said product on the same machine, same SID works just fine.
Report throughput for the same machine with JUST W2KAS(Native to the machine), a "Stress Testing" report took about 25 minutes to complete running a single instance of the report, 1.5 hours running 2 instances on the same machine. Would never complete running 3.
Report was a multi-way cartesian join, with sorting of output to a flat text file which was then used by Envision to create a bunch of "Numbers".
Now running W2KAS in VMware on Linux, single instance of the same report took 30 minutes. Fired up another VMware, One Instance running on Each Virtual W2KAS, both completed in ~40 minutes. Then fired up a third VM, ran one instance of the report on each VM, ~55 minutes for all to complete.
So you tell me, wether or not Linux uses Multi-Processors well. ;)
This is how I address (Arbitrary) projected Performance increases:
1 Processor = x
2 Processors = 1.95x
3 Processors = 2.90x
4 processors = 3.80x
Where x = work done
Beyond this you should really consider a RISC machine rather than Pentium(IA32). Well maybe an Itanium(IA64)... but I'm still in "wait and see mode" on that subject. But upto 4 Processors, you should be good... and Memory will get you farther than another processor, but if you can get both... do that.
Now for the real answer to your question:
Now as for my Dual P5-133, well that machine feels really great. It feels like about a PII-300... of course that is subjective. Very Rarely do I get it in a tizzy. That machine has gone through quite a few changes since I took it out of Primary use.
Started Life as a P5-200MMX days after those MMX processors were available. For about 2 years it lived that way. I then got a new machine. It then got a set of P5-75s put in it, loaded RH 5.1 on it straight away. Stayed that way until some P5-90s came along for free, updated to RH 6.2 at the same time (More HD and Memory added too), then About 10 days after RH7.0 came into being, I ran across a couple of machine being thrownout cause the MB chipsets were bad. The had P5-133s in them. Well, the ended up in Archer as well. That board BTW is a [link|http://www.tyan.com/products/html/a%5Ftomcatiiid.html|Tyan S1563D] motherboard, and Yes now Thane now knows why I like the Intel 430HX chipset as well.
Pretty Swell machine over all!
[link|mailto:curley95@attbi.com|greg] - Grand-Master Artist in IT
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