does Hyperthreading matter for gaming?

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polonyc2

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I'm trying to decide between the i5-750 and i7-860 and need some help in determining which is better for me...the Lynnfield i5-750 has HT disabled while the i7-860 has it enabled...I mainly use my system for gaming (single card ATI 5870 currently) with web browsing and some Office 2007 applications thrown in...I don't do video editing...leaning towards the i5 as I haven't found a convincing argument that the i7's Hyperthreading is going to justify the extra cost over the i5

can anyone shed some light on other situations where HT is worth the i7 premium in a gaming machine...will Hyperthreading EVER make a difference in gaming? (even 1-2 years down the road)...any other arguments for the i7-860 over the i5-750 in general?...thanks for any help
 
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Quad core is more than enough for gaming. The extra 4 phoney cores that HT would give likely wouldn't do much for gaming.

It's still only a handful of games that make efficient use of quad-core's capabilities, in most cases your going to be GPU limited.

The extra HT might be nice for some video encoding apps, and some say Windows feels more responsive in general *shrug*.
 
thanks...looks like the i5 is the one then

with Clarkdale around the corner, will that change the situation?...dual core with Hyperthreading= 4 virtual cores and disabling of integrated graphics...wait for something like Clarkdale i5 670 (3.46 GHz) with HT or go with i5 750 now?
 
polonyc2 said:
thanks...looks like the i5 is the one then

with Clarkdale around the corner, will that change the situation?...dual core with Hyperthreading= 4 virtual cores and disabling of integrated graphics...wait for something like Clarkdale i5 670 (3.46 GHz) with HT or go with i5 750 now?
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Your current computer in your signature is still relevant, so I'd just wait for now.
 
450 said:
Your current computer in your signature is still relevant, so I'd just wait for now.
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no point it waiting as there's nothing coming out in the next 12 months that is geared towards gamers...Gulftown is overkill...maybe a Sandy Bridge quad core but that's over 12 months away...I've actually noticed a few games with Quad Core Recommended Specs recently (I think that new Futuremark game for one) so I'm thinking that 2010 will finally start the era of quad core gaming

so an i5 750 Lynnfield or an upcoming Clarkdale seems like a nice upgrade
 
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HT is awesome to have system wide if you multitask a lot. It makes the entire Windows 7 desktop a bit snappier and overall smoother feeling for me.
 
just a heads up.

i was in the same situation, considering the exact same choice between these two cpus.

an alternative that falls between the i5 750 and the i7 860 is the xeon x3440. it's still an lga1156 socket chip, so it'll drop into any p55 mobo. price-wise it falls between the i5 and the i7, but it gives you HT. it's basically HT for around $50 less than the i7 860.

were it not for a mixup with newegg (they sent me a 5750 instead of a 5770) i'd have a system built right now with the x3440. i'm not planning on OC'ing right off the bat, but when i do, i intend to post results as to just how high these xeons can go.
 
I have an I7 860 and love it. However if all you care about is gaming and are on a budget, then you can save some money by going with an I5 and upgrade something else on you computer.

Some people say that HT hurts gaming performance in WoW, but I have not experienced that. Besides WoW is not not that demanding of a game and I7 860 is way faster than that game will ever demand. My graphics card is a Radeon 4890, so your 5870 will rock with an I5 or I7.

Good luck on your choice :)
 
I prefer the 860 over the 750. It's only 80$ more, naturally faster starting at 2.8 GHz > 2.6. I got mine to 4 GHz, it loads all games faster than everyone else, windows 7 runs well. The turbo boost is great if you are a casual user as it'll speed up for games, then slow down when not in use to save life and power. The 860 for example turbo boosts to 3.5 GHz default settings, quite powerful with 8 cores!
 
clocker5 said:
Some people say that HT hurts gaming performance in WoW, but I have not experienced that. Besides WoW is not not that demanding of a game and I7 860 is way faster than that game will ever demand. My graphics card is a Radeon 4890, so your 5870 will rock with an I5 or I7.
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I think I read that HT may hurt gaming performance in some games as well...that's another reason why I'm debating the merits of HT for a 'gaming only' rig...anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
polonyc2 said:
I think I read that HT may hurt gaming performance in some games as well...that's another reason why I'm debating the merits of HT for a 'gaming only' rig...anyone have any thoughts on this?
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No. There may be a few cases where HT present may have caused a 1-2% drop in fps in some static benchmark or timedemo. But that would be well within normal margin of error or test-to-test fluctuation.
edit: sp
 
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Hopefully DX11 will make use of HT. DX11 is going to put a lot of demand on the GPU, so HT will be very useful to taking some of the load off the GPU.
 
Menelmarar said:
If you play games at 640x480 that might be a concern to you, true.
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What are you talking about dude? Do you actually read?

"First of all in 640 x 480 (or the lowest res) to observe how the CPU limits performance. Next 1920 x 1200, a more neutral resolution that allows you to saturate the GPU or GPUs. Lastly 2560 x 1600 with 4x FSAA that allows us to observe performances when a lot of video memory is used. DirectX 10 games were also tested in their DirectX 9 version, so as to have a basis for comparison with Windows XP. "
 
Yea...but it has no real world relevance because no one plays games at 640x480 anymore. Do you really think its gonna effect me at a resolution of 2560x1600?
 
Just get a 750 and overclock the hell out of it, then dump the money you saved into a better video card.
 
For me I had to turn off HT, this is because in L4D and L4D2 I got lower fps and some shuttering lag. After HT disable now is a true quad core beast. I did farther testing and found out I got extra 200 pints in vantage as well.
 
more evidence of HT hurting gaming performance...

18616552.png


http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-975-950_7.html#sect0
 
Zero82z said:
In both of the games that showed a moderate framerate drop, the remaining framerate was still high enough that it didn't make a difference. I wouldn't call that a real loss for HT unless we start seeing framerate drops large enough to actually reduce playability.
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Furthermore you need to call into question thread utilization with these games. Although I'm surprised with L4D2 as I thought that was a well threaded game. HT may be a win for certain titles while on average conferring no benefit. Most likely those titles are going to be higher end ones, the ones most in need of processing benefits. So the statistics should be weighed for that.
 
maleficarus said:
What are you talking about dude? Do you actually read?
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Did you?

Overall, yes, the dips in performance linked to activation of hyperthreaing are reduced in Windows 7. However, this is not always the case, far from it, in games that put more demands on the CPU.
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The OS that was used played the larger role. Which is what the entire article was about. It wasn't about HT it was, "Windows 7: performance in games."

...given how the game reacts on operating systemsother than Windows XP.
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...This is only in Windows Vista.
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The only reason games may or may not run as great with HT is either because the games aren't coded for it properly or the OS doesn't work as well with it. Seriously though, your not going to notice any difference between 137 FPS and 129. :rolleyes:
 
straight to the point HT doesnt matter in gaming YET. now idk if it ever will but as of now theres no game out there that will use all 8 threads in a hyper threaded quad. and if it did youll only see about a 20-25% increase in performance since those extra 4 "virtual cores" are not true cores... imagine pitting a i7 920 against a q9550 in a synthetic benchmark, for example, video editing, as we all now the 920 blows the c2q out of the water in that area, thats what it would look like if games today can utilize all available threads in our quads or i7's
 
Although I'm surprised with L4D2 as I thought that was a well threaded game.
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But how many threads does it use? If it is optimized for only 4 threads having 4 extra virtual cores does not help.
 
In most applications HT does more harm than good. There are many benchmarks for games as others have mentioned. But even for scientific applications (for example where you solve systems of linear equations using dense/sparse solvers, N-body problems etc.) HT very rarely gives you a large speed increase.

Even though HT gives you an extra thread the amount of cache per thread decreases by a factor of 2 and that degrades performance. However for certain kinds of apps where threads can share cache data efficiently HT should work well.

Point is that the price you pay for HT (i5 vs i7) is difficult to justify unless you know for sure that your app will benefit from HT. So go with i5 and spend the $ on something more worthwhile like a dinner date.
 
rusi said:
Point is that the price you pay for HT (i5 vs i7) is difficult to justify unless you know for sure that your app will benefit from HT. So go with i5 and spend the $ on something more worthwhile like a dinner date.
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There are other advantages to the i7 besides HT.
 
I recently decided to turn HT on. When I did this, Borderlands dropped a bit in fps, not by much but what really bothered me is it started stuttering while walking even while maintaining 60fps+. I also noticed this in a few other games too like Fallout 3.

For me, I'd rather turn it off. I noticed no real world performance while watching movies, internet surfing, listening to music, audio recording, and messing around with various other programs. That's pretty much all I do anyways. And if you want to overclock higher, by turning off ht, it will save you on heat which will let you increase voltage a bit higher.
 
rusi said:
In most applications HT does more harm than good. There are many benchmarks for games as others have mentioned. But even for scientific applications (for example where you solve systems of linear equations using dense/sparse solvers, N-body problems etc.) HT very rarely gives you a large speed increase.

Even though HT gives you an extra thread the amount of cache per thread decreases by a factor of 2 and that degrades performance. However for certain kinds of apps where threads can share cache data efficiently HT should work well.

Point is that the price you pay for HT (i5 vs i7) is difficult to justify unless you know for sure that your app will benefit from HT. So go with i5 and spend the $ on something more worthwhile like a dinner date.
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It depends on what $50 is worth to you. Personally, my fans cost more than $50. It's pretty pointless to go for an i5 when you are starting from scratch with a Microcenter nearby.
 
polonyc2 said:
I'm trying to decide between the i5-750 and i7-860 and need some help in determining which is better for me...the Lynnfield i5-750 has HT disabled while the i7-860 has it enabled...I mainly use my system for gaming (single card ATI 5870 currently) with web browsing and some Office 2007 applications thrown in...I don't do video editing...leaning towards the i5 as I haven't found a convincing argument that the i7's Hyperthreading is going to justify the extra cost over the i5

can anyone shed some light on other situations where HT is worth the i7 premium in a gaming machine...will Hyperthreading EVER make a difference in gaming? (even 1-2 years down the road)...any other arguments for the i7-860 over the i5-750 in general?...thanks for any help
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HTT will help some, but it's the extra cores (and the extra efficiency of i7's cores) that will be the biggest boost for gaming.
 
It depends on what games scale with multiple logical cores, but for the most part, yes, it does hurt performance (but very little, unless you're playing Crysis @ 2560x1600, then yes, it will be noticeable).

HT always helps in heavily multi-threaded programs such as rendering/video encoding/sound editing/very large compiling... but aside that, few programs gain any discernible increase in performance with HT on.
 
MJZ said:
It depends on what $50 is worth to you. Personally, my fans cost more than $50. It's pretty pointless to go for an i5 when you are starting from scratch with a Microcenter nearby.
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I agree. In a $1000 machine it certainly makes sense to go with the i7 but for ~$500 PC which is the biggest market segment $80 difference (b/w 95W i7 vs i5) is huge. Intel knows this well and that is why they have released i5 otherwise it would have been pointless.

It would however be interesting to know if i5 doesnt have HT to start with or is it simply a crippled i7.
 
rusi said:
I agree. In a $1000 machine it certainly makes sense to go with the i7 but for ~$500 PC which is the biggest market segment $80 difference (b/w 95W i7 vs i5) is huge. Intel knows this well and that is why they have released i5 otherwise it would have been pointless.

It would however be interesting to know if i5 doesnt have HT to start with or is it simply a crippled i7.
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Since they are from the same Lynnfield wafers, they probably just have their HT functionality fused off.
 
polonyc2 said:
I think I read that HT may hurt gaming performance in some games as well...that's another reason why I'm debating the merits of HT for a 'gaming only' rig...anyone have any thoughts on this?
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I currently run a 920 DO for my game rig and all I tell the difference between HT on/off is the heat generated...so I turned it off. Atm running 3.6 GHz with two 8800 GTX's, watercooled cpu.
 
with a quad its not going to do anything useful for gaming 99% of the time. with a dual core, HT will help quite a bit because many games do at least use more than 2 threads. Windows 7 was made to take better advantage of HT so you will see the most benefit using it there.
 
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