Hyper Threading, is it worthwhile?

[HotStuff]

I am still getting bogged down trying to unravel the clutter of what chip to get in my upgrade in July.

So I tried running a frame rate counter (fraps) on CSource stress test and BF2 with HT on and then off and guess what??

NO BLOODY DIFFERENCE!!

So maybe I shouldn't worry about chips without HT

 

[Pestcontrol]

No, you shouldn't at all. In fact Intel's next chip will not have HT, despite having a design that is potentially much better suited to it.

Over time the benefits of HT have proven too little, too sporadic, and not worth the slowdowns caused on some other apps. Shame because it looks really good on paper.

 

[decky101]

What is hyper-threading anway? My pc has it and i have no idea what it does and what extra capabilities it gives me.

 

[HotStuff]

It does nothing as far as I can see, games don't take advantage of it, maybe other applications do though. But I honestly wouldn't give it further thought, certainly not as a consideration for an upgrade if you are a gamer.

 

[Pestcontrol]

What is hyper-threading anway? My pc has it and i have no idea what it does and what extra capabilities it gives me.

A simple explanation is this:

When your processor is working on a task, say, a game, not all parts of the processor are actually in use. What hyperthreading does is make these parts available to another task, and hopefully get a bit more work done.

This does cause a small overall slowdown however, and because often two tasks will need to use the same parts of your processor, the benefit is not so great.

 

[thatbloke]

Hyper Threading is simply a posh name for a technology that tries to optimise the way tasks are completed, potentially by allowing two things to happen at once (in different areas of course). However, optimising execution order is a very difficult thing to do with any great success as you are always going to be finding branches, etc. which will cause the processor to have to go and get some data from RAM or wherever, which will slow things down.

Though processor scheduling can never be perfect (unless designed for one task and ONE task only) it will always be improving... and HT is simply an attempt at improving that.








(correct me if I am wrong, however...)

 

[decky101]

Yup, I pretty sure thats the jist of it. But really, i think to myself. Why pay extra to get it? Is the performance change that dramatic?

 

[Pestcontrol]

HT is not worth shelling out extra cash for.