Hyperthreading - do you disable it for gaming?

wunkley

wunkley

wunkley

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Putting this in gaming rather than CPUS, as it's about gaming really.

So, those with intel hyperthreading CPUs (I've got an i7 2600k btw.) Do you mostly turn off hyperthreading in your BIOS for gaming?

Reason I ask is - been testing a lot of games recently with my new 670 SLI setup, and some have been less than stellar performers.
Battlefield 3 was one example - I don't really play this much, but it's a good graphics whore test maxed out on ultra. Was running at constant 60fps but constantly frame skipping and jerking even though was at 60 fps. After a bit of web searching I found a suggestion to turn off CPU hyperthreading and bang - it works. Smooth as silk! No more frame skips.

Assassins creed 3 - also not performing great in SLI. Dips down to 45fps and back up all over the place once you hit Boston. Ran this with hyperthreading on then off, and again there was an improvement. Not as massive as BF3 but still better.

So, what's the consensus. Is it basically best to leave hyperthreading off for gaming? Do any games make any positive use of 'virtual cores'??
 
2600k here as well :)

never turned mine off tbh cant say I've ever noticed any issues

subscribed though :)
 
Never turned it off on my old 4.2ghz ht'd i7 920. Bf3 ran better on it than it does on my current 3570k which has no ht. Bf3 is one game that actually utilises hyperthreading.

Guy at overclock.net posted some benchmarks of his i7 @4.5ghz with hyper threading on and off on battlefield 3 64 man server. Have a look at the minimums.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/...0-7970-7990-owners-thread/19620#post_18983056
 
I haven't turned it off but would be interested in more results from other users. Only notice slight skipping in games with known issues like Skyrim, Far Cry 3 etc.

HT certainly looks better for BF3 in those benches.
 
BF3 should run better with HT on, at least it does on my 920. There was an issue with it a while ago but afaik they fixed it. With most other games it doesn't matter much if its on or not, there are only a few titles that will properly take advantage of HT.
 
Interesting so far. I've had HT off now for a few days. Main reason I went i7 with HT (apart from gaming which i thought might be useful) was for video editing and photography work.

I noticed the other day that with HT off Lightroom actually seemed quicker when exporting out images. I might as well have gone i5 at this rate it seems...

Thing with bf3 for me was, the frame rate never drops below 60, but there is terrible 'judder' with HT on. With it off it's smooth as silk.
 
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