Turn off Hyperthreading?

Higadeb · 26 Aug 2010 at 15:25

Hi guys.
I have a laptop with an i7 720 processor in it which is hyper-threaded. Now I know back in 2006 hyperthreading was deemed extremely energy inefficient. So what I was wondering is would it be a good idea to turn off hyperthreading on my laptop in order to increase battery life? Does anyone know if turning it off would actually make a noticeable difference or not?
The second thing is that my laptop comes with a locked BIOS so I cannot enter the BIOS to turn it off. I know there are ways round this, can anyone recommended me a tried and tested method. Because I really don't want to start experimenting and end up ruining my machine!
Many thanks

Higadeb · 26 Aug 2010 at 23:22

It's a X70 CA. Effectively a re-branded Clevo W860CU.

Higadeb · 28 Aug 2010 at 22:22

Moeks said:
Yea I was thinking that, it's a high performace laptop ...not an energy efficient one. You'll never get all that much battery life out of it anyway.

Turning Blue-tooth off and dimming the screen etc will do more good. The newer Intel CPU's use power-gating transistors and such now, they are much more efficient than the older ones.

Yes, I know. I'm not aiming for hours! Although one would be nice!

One of the main reasons I actually wanted to do it was that without hyper-threading the CPU creates a fair bit less heat. Less heat = slower fans = less noise + further energy savings (well a bit) + increased laptop lifetime.

Higadeb · 29 Aug 2010 at 13:19

sarge78 said:
The option to turn off hyperthreading will be in the BIOS (if it has one) but it'll do sweet FA.

I don't have the option to. So I think I'd have to flash the BIOS, which is really too much effort to be bothered with.
Oh well, it would be nice to turn it off, but as said. It's not exactly the most important thing in the world