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Hyper-threading On or Off ?

mrix

mrix

mrix

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Joined
15 Jan 2006
Posts
574
Location
UK South Coast
Hello all, I read somewhere that having Hyper-threading off can lower cpu temperatures and be better for gaming!

I decided to test it out and my temperatures lowered by around 10c :cool:
I also noticed by GFlops increased from 50 to 58 :cool:

As far as I am aware no games at present run Hyper-threading ? not sure if BF3 will ?

Anyway will be interesting to read your preferences :)

Thanks
mrix
 
Its a case of looking into what uses it to an advantage and what doesnt. And turning it on and off on an individual basis.

On the old I7 920's a lot of people turned off the HT inorder to get massive overlock increases and to reduce temperatures. But with the 2600k's its not really about that.

It is just a case of the task at hand. For instance running the dolphin wii emulator benefits from having it turned off.
 
wannabedamned said:
Its a case of looking into what uses it to an advantage and what doesnt. And turning it on and off on an individual basis.

On the old I7 920's a lot of people turned off the HT inorder to get massive overlock increases and to reduce temperatures. But with the 2600k's its not really about that.

It is just a case of the task at hand. For instance running the dolphin wii emulator benefits from having it turned off.
Click to expand...

But if you're going to turn it off, you may's well buy an i5?
 
Dont suppose you know if its possible to enable or disable HT without a reboot these days? 920 it was a bios setting, so required a reboot.

It would be great if you could just enable or disable it at the touch of a button.
 
Sadly with the 2600K it's still in the BIOS settings.

To OP, which CPU do you have? If it's the Nehalem based one then turning it off will help reduce temps and achieve a better overclock. If it's Sandy Bridge (2600K) then I would just leave it on. It seems to make no difference to the overclock or temperature, and as others has said, if you don't need it then it would've been better to get the 2500K as they're the same chip.
 
re:

Hello I have the Intel i7 920

My system is overclocked mainly for gaming purposes and many games do not use hyper threading so that was my reasoning for not having it enabled.

So far my temps on load are 10c lower
My GFlops are up from 50 to 58

Playing COD Black Ops this evening my ingame FPS has shot up from 60 -> 110 fps to anywhere from 130 to 200.

What could the downside be from this as it all looks great :)

Cheers
mrix
 
If that's the case, then turning off the HT on the 920 if you're only gaming is a good idea as you can reach better overclocks with lower temps. Seems like you've already noticed this difference :).
 
Windows in general works well with HT on. I'm sure Windows could poke many little threads thru the processor via HT while gaming.
 
Wow, was not aware of the detrimental performance that HyperThreading could have to gaming. Wonder what kind of performance increase I'd see with the i3-350M in my laptop.
 
With current CPU's it's pointless. You buy an i5 for gaming/general use and an i7 if you have need for a parallel workload (a hexcore AMD may be a better choice in this case)

If you have one of the older i7 chips, prior to i5 then it's a more nuanced decision. I use my CPU for a variety of tasks, including gaming, virtualisation, rendering and compiling so choose to leave HT on. If you are doing more common desktop tasks I.e. Gaming then it may make more sense to disable it.

Even with it enables, some highly parallel tasks benefit more than others - it's all dependent on the branch ahead and caching of that specific workload.

Short answer, on an i7 used mainly for gaming - turn it off and overclock further.
 
re:

just to let you know. battlefield 3 is going to take advantage of HT
Click to expand...

Hit there and thanks for the heads up, if that is the case then hyperthreading will be being enabled! :)

Have you got a link where they have stated this at all ????

Thanks
mrix
 
mrix from 2esurrection, per chance? If so then lo m8y :)

I'm on an i7 920 as well, and honestly its best to leave HT disabled. The old i7's run a better overclock at lower temps with it turned off.

As for BF3 taking advantage of HT, well no one actually knows yet, but it's true that BFBC2 does not benefit from HT. And that beyond the odd heavy duty flight sim, gaming in general does not benefit from it either.

Personally I expect your 920 will run it (with the caveat of a good cpu oc & gfx card) just fine without it, and will run at cooler temps as a bonus.
 
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