Has anyone ever wondered “if we want more processing power in our computers why don’t we just add another processor?” Here is the motherboard from a Dell Precision Tower T7910, an enterprise-level workstation used for tasks such as 3D rendering, simulations, and more recently development with VR.
Above is a Gigabyte GA-7PESL server motherboard for use with Intel Xeon E5-2400 processors (processors designed explicitly for multi-socket systems with enterprise use), which highlights the other primary use of a multi-socket system being used in servers. In high-density heavy-traffic servers a single one of these can operate more efficiently than multiple separate systems can together. This is due to the other reason a multi-socket system may be appealing; the ability to use more memory. Modern enterprise processors are able to address a maximum of 1 terabyte of RAM however each processor added will be able to address it’s own separate memory and as with the motherboard shown below that means potentially 4 terabytes of RAM!
While many would think that being able to just add more processors this would be great for personal uses like video games you would find that it’s quite the opposite. A multi-socket system does not behave the same way as if you doubled the amount of cores on a single-socket system; because there is a through-line on the motherboard to share data between the two processors if an application is not designed to make use of a system such as this the two will often conflict over which one works with what data meaning your performance is capped by the motherboard itself. The other downside is that while these systems have absolutely absurd memory capabilities, most consumer applications will not take up more than 32 gigabytes of RAM as well as Windows ITSELF (while being able to acknowledge up to 2 terabytes) is not capable of operating more than about 256 gigabytes meaning that you’ll likely never see a reason to seek out hardware like this.