Is using multiple CPUs possible in a laptop?

Question

I am planning to buy a new laptop. I am aiming for a High-Performance Laptop (Gaming). This might sound like a silly question, but I notice that it is possible to use dual GPUs to enhance the graphic ability for 1080p resolution. I would like to use dual CPUs as well.

I am thinking about combining two Intel Extreme Core i7 4940MX Quad-Core 3.1GHz CPUs together. Is it possible?

Solution 1

Let me tell you a few reasons why we do not have multi CPU gaming laptops but have multi GPU gaming laptops instead.

These days games are more GPU intensive than CPU. That is why multi GPU makes more sense than multi CPU. If games were still CPU intensive then the manufactures would have definitely focused on making systems with multi CPUs instead of multi GPUs. Most high end gaming desktops these days are also limited to single high end CPU and multiple GPUs.

Another reason being with each passing year with the improvement in fabrication technology more cores are being integrated on a single CPU die. Thus the need for multi CPU is actually diminishing as more cores are being integrated on a single CPU chip. A multi-core solution is far better than a multi CPU solution, reasons being - better performance, reduced space consumption, reduced power consumption and less heat generation all of which are in favour of building a good performance laptop.

These are the main reasons why we do not a have gaming laptop (till now) with multi CPU solution but with multi GPU solutions. In the future we might have but who knows!

Solution 2

Many if not all consumer grade PCs these days come with multi core CPUs. These come as one physical chip but act as several different CPUs. This is where the terms dual core, quad core etc come from. There are many games and apps that are programmed to take advantage of these multi core CPUs.

There are machines that come with multiple physical chip CPUs, but by and large these machines are built to be servers. These CPUs work differently than the CPUs in consumer grade PCs.

Solution 3

There aren't any Laptops with more then one CPU as far as I know. If you want to have two CPUs you need a server motherboard (which doesn't fit into a laptop ) Multpile CPUs would cause more problems then they solve so you should buy one good and powerful CPU (that's enough) ;)

Comments

[Karan]

Did your research (which I assume you did prior to posting here) throw up any known instances of a consumer laptop with dual CPUs?

[TBBT]

No. I haven't found any laptop which is come with dual CPUs, but I assume that might be dual CPUs cards are expensive.

[Karan]

Even if dual-CPU laptops were expensive (and they would be), if there was demand and it was feasible then OEMs would sell them. If you haven't found any then I don't see what you can do about it short of attempting to build your own.

[Ayan]

There are quite a few reasons why we do not have multi CPU gaming laptops. I tried my best to explain them, see my answer.

[Richie Frame]

Core i7 4940MX also does not support a multi cpu configuration, regardless of motherboard used

[Outdated Computer Tech]

I really don't understand the down-voting in SU anymore. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this question. Gaining Reputation on this website is close to impossible these days, it has become a pure joke.

[TBBT]

This is just for general understanding. What do you mean when you said, these days games are more GPU intensive than CPU?

[Ayan]

In simple terms the amount of computation required for the visuals of the game is far more compared to that of the other computations that are handled by the CPU (non graphic workloads). These days the visuals and effects are so much more detailed that each and every frame that is rendered on the screen has to go through dozes of stages of processing. Think about that. You need to render at-least 30 of these frames each second on the screen to get a smooth gaming experience. This is just an abstract of what I meant by "These days games are more GPU intensive than CPU". Do you play games?

[TBBT]

I do. I play BF4 and CIV 5 most of all. However, my current laptop can only handle medium graphic setting, and my CPU is always 100% (92 to be precise as I am using Window 8.1) every time I play.

[Ayan]

BF4 is actually one of the few games which is both CPU and GPU intensive. I haven't played CIV 5 so can't say anything about it. But games like AC, GTA, FarCry, etc are more GPU demanding when you keep on increasing their visuals and resolution. Their CPU utilization is more or less the same in most visual settings.

[user2284570]

There aren't any Laptops with more then one cpus as far as I know. Do you mean there are ? I’m interested in race conditions. So I´m looking for a laptop with non ecc ram and 2 cpu sockets.