Smack2k wrote:

I got an ATX LX4 Dual-P Motherboard (MS6114) in a bunch of parts I was given by a family friend. The board has (2) 333 MHZ P2's […]
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I got an ATX LX4 Dual-P Motherboard (MS6114) in a bunch of parts I was given by a family friend. The board has (2) 333 MHZ P2's installed on it and an take faster P2's.

What were these boards good for by having dual P2's? Just better performance?

Is there anything cool I could do with it, if for any other reason, just to do it?

Any other info is appreciated as well....just trying to understand what they were used for.

High-end workstations (CAD, video production, etc.) and servers. Windows NT, 2000 and beyond are the only x86 operating systems that recognized multiple CPUs.

Smack2k wrote:

What were these boards good for by having dual P2's? Just better performance?

In games it will run as a regular single CPU pentium II since most games up to 2003-ish do not support multi-cpu / multi-core

Brickpad wrote:

Smack2k wrote:

I got an ATX LX4 Dual-P Motherboard (MS6114) in a bunch of parts I was given by a family friend. The board has (2) 333 MHZ P2's […]
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I got an ATX LX4 Dual-P Motherboard (MS6114) in a bunch of parts I was given by a family friend. The board has (2) 333 MHZ P2's installed on it and an take faster P2's.

What were these boards good for by having dual P2's? Just better performance?

Is there anything cool I could do with it, if for any other reason, just to do it?

Any other info is appreciated as well....just trying to understand what they were used for.

High-end workstations (CAD, video production, etc.) and servers. Windows NT, 2000 and beyond are the only x86 operating systems that recognized multiple CPUs.

Ahem...
Windows NT, 2000 and beyond are the only Microsoft Windows operating systems that recognize multiple CPUs. SMP capable UNIX systems have been around for a long time. At the extreme end, Sequent built big shared memory machines using i386 processors running DYNIX.

Quake 3 Arena was one of these early games (in the year 2000) which had SMP support on NT based windows systems.

I remember when playing that game with a dual celeron (466@525, Abit BP6) and win2000. It was really a boost with the second cpu.

I'm little sad that i don't have this amazing board anymore... 😢

Gaming wise the 2nd CPU wont really give you much of a performance boost.

You could argue that when in Windows 2000, the 2nd CPU is taking some of the OS's load off the first CPU but its not by a noticeable amount, and suspect my singe P3 1Ghz PC is still faster then the duel 600Mhz (haven't really tested though)

But I love gaming on my Duel P3. Most Win9x games run fine under Win2k and the OS is much more stable.
Nothing stopping you from duel booting to Win98 or dos, just means a CPU isn't used.

Really its just something a bit different, cool, or whatever.
Link to my PC for inspiration
Asus P2B-DS Build