[rm199]

Is quake 3 the only dual aware game at the moment?? Where could I find a list websearching seems to come up with nothing

RM

[littlegreenspud]

I believe Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor and the multiplayer version of Soldier of Fortune II are.

Try looking in the .cfg or .ini file for r_smp = 0 or 1. set it to 1 and run the game with CPU monitor on expanded window stretched right across you screen. This should allow you to quit out of the game and see if both processors were being used.

[rm199]

cheers for the info, i wont be able to test it - im asking to help make up my mind about buying a powermac

RM

[a2daj]

Based on comments from a MacPlay tech support person, SMP isn't enabled in MP SoFII for Mac.
Last time I checked, RtCW and MoH didn't work with SMP. I think the setting is ignored. JKII Multiplayer may support it. If that's the case, then Duane might be able to implement some of the SMP fixes used in JKII for RtCW and MoH.

[rhombus]

Giants is fully SMP aware.
Don't buy a dual processor Powermac if you think the second processor will help in games - only 2 games are fully SMP aware at the moment. It seems unlikely publishers will take the time to update games with broken SMP support.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by rhombus:
Giants is fully SMP aware.
Don't buy a dual processor Powermac if you think the second processor will help in games - only 2 games are fully SMP aware at the moment. It seems unlikely publishers will take the time to update games with broken SMP support.

There are other kinds of PowerMacs than dual processor???

[CIA]

I hope your kidding....

[voodoo]

Originally posted by CIA:
I hope your kidding....

Yes and no. There are obviously older powermacs that are not dual processor, but all the PMs sold today are.

Don't be as uptight as your handle suggest you should be. It's just a handle

[juanvaldes]

even if the game does not explictly support it you do get some performance boost from two CPUs. The kernal will move threads over to the second CPU for you, but you get less of a boost then you would with a fully SMP enabled game.

What else are you planning to do with your new mac? once you go dual you never go back

[rhombus]

Originally posted by juanvaldes:
even if the game does not explictly support it you do get some performance boost from two CPUs. The kernal will move threads over to the second CPU for you, but you get less of a boost then you would with a fully SMP enabled game.

The boost is tiny though. At least it is on my 450Mhz G4 DP. I played MOHAA (not SMP enabled) singleplayer and opened Process Viewer. The game was taking up about 115% CPU (I assume that means 100% usage on one CPU and 15% on the other).

And in response to voodoo's critism of my last post - I meant don't buy a Powermac (i.e. wait for better ones).

[joe]

Originally posted by rhombus:
The boost is tiny though. At least it is on my 450Mhz G4 DP.

I agree completely, the boost is barely noticeable on my dual 500 too! This is one of the biggest misconceptions about dual processor Macs and non-SMP games. Example for Quake3. My 500Mhz G4 Cube/GeForce3 managed about 60fps in HQ (800*600) last Spring. Shortly afterwards I upgraded my Cube to a Sonnet dual 500 which boosted that to a whopping 63fps <yawn>. Thankfully, Q3 is fully SMP aware. And after turning on SMP <r_smp 1> my frame rates skyrocketed to 110fps at 800*600HQ

Essentially, the idea that ALL apps benefit from dual processors is vastly overblown. Maybe the benefit is more noticeable when multitasking? But after 8 months with my dual 500 one thing is very clear: for non-SMP-aware games, the benefit from dual processor is insignificant! So unless you're also running a lot of Professional apps (PhotoShop, Final Cut Pro, etc) or mostly play Quake3 and Giants - a dual processor upgrade is overkill. My next Cube upgrade will most likely be a 1GHz single processor.....joe