Registered: Dec 2004
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I got into a discussion last night with some friends about the Hyper Threading capability of Intel's processors. I know how it works, that it splits the processor power and in turn acts like it was a dual processor, I could see how this would greatly benefit office systems, but is it worth it for gaming?

On a computer that is running one program, such as a game, is having the HT turned on going to help performance or decrease it? Like I said, I know what it does, but unsure exactly how it works on the technical end. I was hoping if anyone knew more about it they could lend their 2 cents.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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WIthout numbers this is speculation... But anyway, I do not think it would hurt it... In essense it uses a "virtual" processor to do normal functions and therefore does fine... When you run a game, that is assentially a single process and will not split... Now if a game is written for multiple processors, then i would say there is defenite benefit because you can have simultaneous processes going to the "virtual dual" processors...

If the game is not written for it, I would not anticipate seeing barely any performance increase and no decrease..

Just my thoughts though...

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Registered: Oct 2001
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It would depend on how the application is programmed. Some applications actually perform better at certain tasks w/o HT. Benches
As I understand it, HT is not always on. When an application is only using one thread, then the processor is in single-task mode and only switches over to multi-task mode when the second thread appears (via an interrupt request), which actually degrades peformance during that small instance while it switches over. Also, keep in mind that multi-threading does not necessarily mean running multiple programs. One program can run more than one thread on a HT machine to optimize it's performance.

If you really want a performance increase, go with a dual-processor setup .

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Registered: Sep 2003
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I've got a P4 with HTing. At the LAN we could run some of our own benchamrks and see if there is a #'s or visual difference.

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I have a p4 with HT, ws just curious if i should turn it off or keep it on. I'm working on some benchmarks myself, I'll post them when I'm done.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Hey Evil, I see an article coming on if you and Mizzouri want to get together and write one through email...

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