Hyperthreading

[KickItTwice]

A friend of mine is getting ready to upgrade his computer for gaming purposes. He likes the racing games, NASCAR and such. Would hyper threading P4 proccessor be the way to go? Or what about dual Xeons? Or just get an AMD?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

HT does nothing for gaming, unless you want to do something else at the same time, then it is very useful. If this is going to be a dedicated high-end gaming rig go A64.

 

[CraigRT]

DAPUNISHER is right, no benefits, no games support SMP, and that is basically what hyperthreading is.
Although the good thing about it is, if you wanted to run SETI in the background, you could, without devoting 100% of the CPU to the other app (the game)

 

[clarkey01]

Hyperthreading is a marketing ploy, yes it does kinda work, but not the 100% second CPU as Intel would like you to think, does have it uses but over rated me thinks.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

5 - 10% performance gains while using multiple applications at the same time

 

[Dman877]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Hyperthreading is a marketing ploy, yes it does kinda work, but not the 100% second CPU as Intel would like you to think, does have it uses but over rated me thinks.

That;s been my experience too. It's mostly gimmick. If you want to surf the net or play solataire while running prime95 or encoding something, it might help a little, but your comp will still be stuttery, as it will with an A64 or XP.

 

[sbuckler]

Makes a pretty big difference if some application decides it wants 100% of your cpu (e.g. compiling while surfing the web). Non hyperthreaded machines grind to a halt, but the hyper threaded ones does a much better job of staying responsive.
No advantage in games, however there are always instances where you need to run 2 things at once - e.g. using your machine as the server for some multiplayer lan game, while playing the game at the same time.

 

[carlosd]

Haven't seen the advanteges of hiperthreading. I feel athlons 64 a lot more responsives than P4 w hiperthreading when runnig multiple applications. It is because the integrated memory controller has more impact in the system responsivenes than P4 HT useless technology. Try an A64 and ypu will inmediatly feel it is faster than a P4 or AXP.

 

[KickItTwice]

I believe that the intended use is to play multiplayer NASCAR while hosting the game at the same time. It sounds like it just comes back to cost vs. performance. If I can get a processor that is already 20% faster for same or less money than the hyperthreaded one, then HT wouldn't offer enough to sway me towards buying it. I don't think that the NASCAR game is enough to demand 100% of a high end CPU because the game seems to have the framerate capped at around 60 fps. I'm still not sure which route I would go. I like the 939 motherboards for the Athlon.

 

[Acanthus]

I can rip CDs and encode to MP3 on itunes while playing games without major slowdowns with HT enabled, if i disable HT, the game because unplayable and the encoding takes forever.

Just an example.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I can rip CDs and encode to MP3 on itunes while playing games without major slowdowns with HT enabled, if i disable HT, the game because unplayable and the encoding takes forever.

Just an example.

Not having owned an HT CPU, this is the kind of info I find to be the most useful, so thanks :beer: I always think of what it can do for DC projects as being where I would love it.

 

[Acanthus]

I actually stumbled onto that too, i read on here that win2k doesnt properly support HT, so i disabled it via BIOS.

I had been ripping my CD library into itunes and continued doing so the following day, and it ran like total crap, it took me over an hour to figure out that HT was the problem.

I like a lot of others here, think HT isnt exactly a neccesity, but its a nice feature to have. I dont think it sells cpus though.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I can rip CDs and encode to MP3 on itunes while playing games without major slowdowns with HT enabled, if i disable HT, the game because unplayable and the encoding takes forever.

Just an example.

Not having owned an HT CPU, this is the kind of info I find to be the most useful, so thanks :beer: I always think of what it can do for DC projects as being where I would love it.

I USE to have a P4 with HT and NOW own a Athlon64 3200+ (754) and I notice NO difference.
I also right now have BT D/L and U/L, burning a DVD, and am playing a MP3. No lag on any.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I can rip CDs and encode to MP3 on itunes while playing games without major slowdowns with HT enabled, if i disable HT, the game because unplayable and the encoding takes forever.

Just an example.

Not having owned an HT CPU, this is the kind of info I find to be the most useful, so thanks :beer: I always think of what it can do for DC projects as being where I would love it.

I USE to have a P4 with HT and NOW own a Athlon64 3200+ (754) and I notice NO difference.
I also right now have BT D/L and U/L, burning a DVD, and am playing a MP3. No lag on any.

Thanks for the feedback I know my A64 can handle some multitasking, believe me. But, it won't get any work on my folding@Home projects done while gaming, and it won't match what a HT chip can do with 2 instances of f@h running. That is a real world difference that HT makes that I could benefit from. Obviously the type of multitasking you do isn't a deal maker/breaker but DC projects make HT sweet to DC peeps

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I actually stumbled onto that too, i read on here that win2k doesnt properly support HT, so i disabled it via BIOS.

That is not true, Win2k supports HT.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: beatle

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I actually stumbled onto that too, i read on here that win2k doesnt properly support HT, so i disabled it via BIOS.

That is not true, Win2k supports HT.

I bolded what I believe to be the operative word in that sentence.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I can rip CDs and encode to MP3 on itunes while playing games without major slowdowns with HT enabled, if i disable HT, the game because unplayable and the encoding takes forever.

Just an example.

Not having owned an HT CPU, this is the kind of info I find to be the most useful, so thanks :beer: I always think of what it can do for DC projects as being where I would love it.

I USE to have a P4 with HT and NOW own a Athlon64 3200+ (754) and I notice NO difference.
I also right now have BT D/L and U/L, burning a DVD, and am playing a MP3. No lag on any.

That's because using Bittorrent and playing mp3's uses virtually no CPU power. Try encoding a DVD movie while burning a CD/DVD, or playing a DVD movie while encoding and/pr burning a DVD and THEN you will notice the advantage of hyperthreading.

I am an absolute Hyperthreading zealot, it's the reason I run a P4 and not a (faster) Athlon64.

What does HT do for gaming? Not only does it do nothing (no games are optimized for it), but there is generally a 1-4% slowdown for having HT enabled in the bios while gaming.

However, if you are a heavy multitasker (and if you learn how to use HT efficiently, you will become one ), then HT is a godsend.


If you're a serious gamer (and have some extra cash/room/etc), then Athlon64 plus a second PC works best (obviously). Athlon64 is faster for games in general, often by a pretty respectable margin.

However, if you're more of a "heavy PC user," ie you like to surf the web and do CPU intensive stuff at the same time (encoding stuff, burning stuff, playing dvds/divx/etc), that's where HT and the P4 shine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
That's because using Bittorrent and playing mp3's uses virtually no CPU power. Try encoding a DVD movie while burning a CD/DVD, or playing a DVD movie while encoding and/pr burning a DVD and THEN you will notice the advantage of hyperthreading.

I am an absolute Hyperthreading zealot, it's the reason I run a P4 and not a (faster) Athlon64.

See, that's something that I don't understand. A HT-capable P4 CPU has no more actual functional execution units than a non-HT or HT-disabled P4. It only is able to make more use of those units. So if you are trying to run two tasks, that generally take the same type of processing power (both integer ALU or both FPU), then, due to cache-thrashing effects, a HT system should actually be slower.

If one task is FPU, and one task integer (For example, running an FPU-heavy distributed-computing client in the background, while doing normal browsing/office-style tasks, which are pretty much integer-only), then you can see some pretty significant gains overall.

It's kind of like a quart of water, and a quart of alcohol. If you pour them into a container, the liquid volume doesn't add up to two quarts, it's somewhat less. HT is the same way. Take two tasks that take N compute time, but require different CPU resources, and the overall time taken when using an HT-capable system should be less than 2N.

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
However, if you are a heavy multitasker (and if you learn how to use HT efficiently, you will become one ), then HT is a godsend.

One thing that I noticed, when using an older i440BX system, both with a PII-300 @ 450, and a Celeron 300A @ 450 - many people reported that games performance back in that era was nearly identical, since games were mostly just FPU-heavy, but for other software, and especially multi-tasking ordinary desktop apps, I found that the PII was far superior, on the exact same hardware and apps. I attribute that to having 4X the amount of L2 cache that the Celly had. I assume, perhaps naively, that one of the reasons that the A64s seem so "smooth" while multitasking, is their relatively large amount of cache, as compared to other contemporary desktop CPUs. (I'm sure that the shorter pipeline helps too, slightly, as compared to the P4.)

Actually, that probably pretty-much explains why an P4 HT CPU would perform better on multi-tasking desktop apps compared to a non-HT P4, even if they are all mostly integer tasks. One thread can run, while the other is experiencing a memory-dependent CPU pipeline stall, I think. I had overlooked that fact. Games, on the other hand, tend to have more pipeline-optimized code, and tend to be more sensitive to cache-thrashing due to another HT task competing for CPU resources. I think.

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
However, if you're more of a "heavy PC user," ie you like to surf the web and do CPU intensive stuff at the same time (encoding stuff, burning stuff, playing dvds/divx/etc), that's where HT and the P4 shine.

Note, those tasks that you mentioned, are not just CPU-intensive, but moreso memory bandwidth-intensive, which means that they probably experience a good number of CPU pipeline stalls due to having to wait for accesses to main memory. Thus, another task with a relatively small cache/memory footprint, could easily execute from cache in the "in-between" periods while the first task is waiting. Hmm.

Perhaps HT isn't totally worthless after all, I should see about re-enabling it on the other machine here. (I disabled it at first, because the system was originally installed on a uni-processor system with W2K, and I don't think that the HAL likes to be toyed with after installation, and to suddently see multiple logical CPUs. If that box ever gets re-installed or upgraded to XP, I'll try enabling it this time and see what happens.)

 

[hondAS2ooo170]

isnt hypertreading mainly for multi tasking

 

[Sylvanas]

Gaming cpu= Amd64

 

[clarkey01]

hondAS2ooo170
Junior Member

Posts: 4
Joined: 08/12/2004
isnt hypertreading mainly for multi tasking

-------------------------
AMD is the Sh!t


If AMD are sh*t then what does that make Intel @ the moment ?

 

[edmundoab]

AFX= gaming CPU too.. for a bomb price of course.

 

[Acanthus]

(by the way, there are some SMP aware titles)

Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies are both SMP aware, and can take advantage of HT as well as multiple cpus.

 

[Zoinks]

Is there any disadvantage to hyperthreading in games?

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: Zoinks
Is there any disadvantage to hyperthreading in games?

At least one person that posted in this thread thinks so:

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
What does HT do for gaming? Not only does it do nothing (no games are optimized for it), but there is generally a 1-4% slowdown for having HT enabled in the bios while gaming.