TechBoy

Does Hyperthreading have an advantage when playing pc games?

Cyborg

in only when there are multiple threads running in parallel and competing for the processor's resources can added performance be noticed.
This does happen in games but I have never tested the effects on results although there should be a benefit for overall performance.

Semona

Even if games are multi-threaded there will never be an advantage. Theoredically, hyperthreading turns a single core into two cores with 50% of the power of the origional. So even if the multithreaded engine operates at 100% efficency, hyperthreading will never make a game run faster than the origional core.

TechBoy

So, could you in theory actually get better performance in games with a 3.0 P4 w/out HT than one with HT?

ITRocks

Yes - you could, but what Zelda says is actually a little misleading. A Hyperthreading CPU does not actually divide the resource set in two - a standard CPU when multitasking does that (though if we actually consider the fact that time slices are very slim, even that's a bit of a lie). For a reasonable explanation of how it works... go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthreading

EDIT: Oh - and actually, if the game is actually multi-threaded, then YES hyperthreading CAN make the game run faster than the non-hyperthreaded version of the same core. Bear in mind that that's ONLY in the case where the game is genuinely multi-threaded.

Semona

Huh...so in hyperthreading the second thread gets the leftover execution time from the first thread. Man that would be a nightmare to program for. No wonder it caused so many problems in a lot of games.

Thank god its dead. Dual core for the win!

TechBoy

My system has this hyperthreading and i did alot of performance testing when i first had my pc but it doesnt affect fps.

Tbh HT causes alot of problems!

1) BSOD when connecting to internet with ht on. never see BSOD with ht off
2) No server list in counterstrike with ht off but ok when on
3) No server list in NFSU2 with ht off but ok when on

Sometimes my internet would connect fine with ht on but most times my pc would crash showing the BSOD. With ht turned off i cant see the server lists in the two games mentioned so i would lose out no matter what i did

Ive had a few other problems with ht on but its constantly off these days as i cant stand it crashing all the time.

This is what i would see at least once every day while trying to connect to the net:



HATE IT!!!!!

ITRocks

hyperthreading was just a little shortcut for intel to squeez as much performance out of their netburst chips

Semona

hyperthreading was just a little shortcut for intel to squeez as much performance out of their netburst chips

Cyborg

Well I got this problem when I had a Prescott 2.8 HT . The problem only occured when using the cable modem via USB cable . USB conflict was the main problem with HT processors so when I shifted to ethernet I never got the BSOD.

On the other hand in odd cases you will see HT slows down some of the apps execution instead of running them faster. Oh well I guess fooling the OS in thinking that a single core is dual core to make it work more is not a good idea in reality.