Hyper Threading Help Gaming Performance?

[TheJackal]

i don't know the answer to this, but maybe you guys do. does ht help in gaming performance, or is it just appear to the game as one cpu? thanks

 

[n64man120]

Indirectly I will say Yes, it does. It can split priority of the game, and background processes.

 

[Master Bob]

For unoptimized games the above answer holds true.

But for games which are coded to take advantage of HT , even more so.

 

[TheJackal]

For unoptimized games the above answer holds true.

But for games which are coded to take advantage of HT , even more so.

do you know of any coded games? i never heard of ht coded games before! sweet.

 

[Dan_D]

Hyperthreading isn't supported by the games. If the performance of an Intel CPU vs. an AMD one is any indication. Games are not muli-threaded. There in lies the problem with the above statements. The CPU can not "split" any tasks from the game across both virtual CPU's. Benchmarks have shown that HT does nothing for games. In fact it hurts performance by up to 1 or 2 percent.

Where HT shines is in applications, and the OS itself to a degree. Responsiveness when alt-tabbing out of a game is improved on a HT capable machine due to the fact the OS and other applications as well as background services can take advantage of HT. The game itself gains ZERO performance improvement out of HT.

Same goes for dual core, and traditional SMP or even SMP dual core systems. Games do not directly bennefit from this technology at the present time. This will change sometime in the future. When exactly the precedent for multi-threaded gaming will be set, I can not say as I do not know. Hopefully soon. With all the X2's Pentium-D's and existing Opteron/Xeon rigs already in existance, and more being sold all the time. Those of us that have already adopted this technology will find improvements in such games immediately. Thus further increasing the value of our expensive purchases, and rather large e-penises.

 

[Jesus_Faction]

i know my bro had to disable HT to even play bf2

 

[TheJackal]

Hyperthreading isn't supported by the games. If the performance of an Intel CPU vs. an AMD one is any indication. Games are not muli-threaded. There in lies the problem with the above statements. The CPU can not "split" any tasks from the game across both virtual CPU's. Benchmarks have shown that HT does nothing for games. In fact it hurts performance by up to 1 or 2 percent.

Where HT shines is in applications, and the OS itself to a degree. Responsiveness when alt-tabbing out of a game is improved on a HT capable machine due to the fact the OS and other applications as well as background services can take advantage of HT. The game itself gains ZERO performance improvement out of HT.

Same goes for dual core, and traditional SMP or even SMP dual core systems. Games do not directly bennefit from this technology at the present time. This will change sometime in the future. When exactly the precedent for multi-threaded gaming will be set, I can not say as I do not know. Hopefully soon. With all the X2's Pentium-D's and existing Opteron/Xeon rigs already in existance, and more being sold all the time. Those of us that have already adopted this technology will find improvements in such games immediately. Thus further increasing the value of our expensive purchases, and rather large e-penises.

so disabling HT would improve game performance? but the alt tabbing out wouldn't go as fast as mine does now? (it's instantaneous )

 

[Master Bob]

Hyperthreading isn't supported by the games. If the performance of an Intel CPU vs. an AMD one is any indication. Games are not muli-threaded. There in lies the problem with the above statements. The CPU can not "split" any tasks from the game across both virtual CPU's. Benchmarks have shown that HT does nothing for games. In fact it hurts performance by up to 1 or 2 percent.

What about those games that have the stupid little intel P4 sign with the HT mark?

 

[TheJackal]

What about those games that have the stupid little intel P4 sign with the HT mark?

like ages of empires 3 demo, the splash screen says "runs best on intel" with the picture of the badge

 

[deathBOB]

i know my bro had to disable HT to even play bf2

Thats a Bf2 issue.

 

[rogue_jedi]

What about those games that have the stupid little intel P4 sign with the HT mark?

that's just because intel gave them more money than amd did... same with the "the way its meant to be played" games.

really, that just means that it takes advantage of SSE2/3, which not all athlons have.

depending how you game, HT can help. maybe. if you run winamp and all that (like me) then it'll probably help a bit. i wouldn't know (amd here) so try it yourself, under normal usage, and find out. in benchmark mode, you're only running the game, and thus HT will hurt (there's some overhead or something i think) but if you're doing real-world usage (quick round of deathmatch before the next meeting) it'll help.

 

[TheJackal]

all right. i'll disable ht tomorrow and see if i notice a difference. on a side note, in my bios it says hyper threading enabled or disabled and says pick disabled if you're using w2k. if i disabled this even though im on xp, wou;d it f up my system?

 

[rayg]

What about those games that have the stupid little intel P4 sign with the HT mark?

It's just advertising dude, Intel paid them to put it there.

 

[Mr_Evil]

Yeah, once more dual core procs get out there I reckon Devs will take advantage of HT and Dual core. However, until most of the customer base has HT or Dual Core I reckon the multi-threading in the games will only be to a degree where the game gets a boost in performance while still being playable on a non multi-threading machine.

i know my bro had to disable HT to even play bf2

I ran BF2 since the day it came out, including the demo even on a Hyperthreaded intel Rig. Never had problems with HT being turned on. Sounds like something else is the matter with your brother's machine.

 

[PikachuMan]

that's just because intel gave them more money than amd did... same with the "the way its meant to be played" games.

really, that just means that it takes advantage of SSE2/3, which not all athlons have.

Actually, AoE3 specifically was designed to take advantage of multicore processors, and I would guess this would genuinely improve performance on processors with hyperthreading.

 

[Dallows]

if HT was better, why does intel lose in all game benchmarks?

 

[XOR != OR]

The game itself gains ZERO performance improvement out of HT.

Directly, that's true. However, if the OS is doing oportunistic scheduling, then the game will virtually get it's own processor for it's work, thus improving overall game play. Assuming HT were anything close to SMP. Which it isn't, not even close from what I'm told. But the theory remains the same.

 

[Mabrito]

if HT was better, why does intel lose in all game benchmarks?

For various other reasons. HT was meant to improve multi-tasking performance, not improve gaming performance, even though it did hold the gaming crowd when it first came out for a little while if im not mistaken. HT still does what its meant to do, and that is, improve multi-tasking.

 

[Mr_Evil]

if HT was better, why does intel lose in all game benchmarks?

Because no games are coded to take advantage of it. I think Quake 3 is the only game I can think of that supports multi-threading.

 

[Dan_D]

Because no games are coded to take advantage of it. I think Quake 3 is the only game I can think of that supports multi-threading.

Quake III did. But doesn't do so any longer. Problems with SMP code as I understand it. The problem was centered around offloading the audio onto the second processor to improve performance.

I admit that HT does help the overall OS and in your games you do get a boost if you run apps in the background while you game. So indirectly it does help. Otherwise though it does not. AOE3 does take advantage of SMP code, and therefore it will be better on HT enabled processors, and even better on true SMP or dual core systems.

As far as disabling HT to gain performance in games, its not even worth it. We are talking about a sub 1% difference. Not enough to make going into the BIOS worthwhile. As far as the Windows 2K thing, its because Windows 2K doesn't understand HT. It tries to run the system as if it were a true SMP system and problems occur as a result. So for Windows 2000 you need to turn HT off. For Windows XP, leave it on. The bennefits outweigh any downside. As another note of some importance, AMD's lead in games in spite of HT simply because AMD processors are just that much faster in games, and HT doesn't help enough indirectly or directly to compensate for the P4's inability to deliver the same level of gaming performance.

The architecture of the Pentium 4 is great for certain things. Like all technologies it has drawbacks. AMD's are simply stronger in gaming performance. The two companies products are simply very different and have strengths and weaknesses vs. one another.

 

[TheJackal]

As far as disabling HT to gain performance in games, its not even worth it. We are talking about a sub 1% difference. Not enough to make going into the BIOS worthwhile. As far as the Windows 2K thing, its because Windows 2K doesn't understand HT. It tries to run the system as if it were a true SMP system and problems occur as a result. So for Windows 2000 you need to turn HT off. For Windows XP, leave it on. The bennefits outweigh any downside. As another note of some importance, AMD's lead in games in spite of HT simply because AMD processors are just that much faster in games, and HT doesn't help enough indirectly or directly to compensate for the P4's inability to deliver the same level of gaming performance.

yeah, i'd have to agree with that. i just tried it without ht and bf2 actually ran slower. i got like 5-9 less fps with it disabled. like when your next to a tank and it fires and you hear the ringing and everything slows down, well that's what mine did without ht, it studdered very badly and it's never studdered with ht on. interesting stuff intel

it's staying on.

 

[Dan_D]

Well when I went from a Intel Pentium 550@3.9GHz to a Athlon 64 3800+ I noticed a dramatic difference in game performance. I was able to run the games faster, but my FPS would take a huge hit anytime I ran Media Player or anything else in the background. I also noticed decreased performance of the system while multi-tasking in general. Things that were smooth with my Pentium 4 machine suddenly weren't anymore.

When I got my Opteron all that changed. Everything felt smoother and more consistant. Plus I had the A64's gaming performance back, plus the multi-tasking thanks to true SMP. For me the AMD tech tour deal was too good to pass up. I've been enjoying it ever since. Now I can have the best of both worlds.

 

[TheJackal]

so if you play games and run things in the background (like media player i usually listen to music while playing bf2 ) you should go with intel? yeah i can't imagine the fps increase going from intel to amd, but i wouldn't want to give up my ht!

does ht help during gaming say with the processes? (virus scanners, aim, speedfan, etc.)

 

[Dan_D]

so if you play games and run things in the background (like media player i usually listen to music while playing bf2 ) you should go with intel? yeah i can't imagine the fps increase going from intel to amd, but i wouldn't want to give up my ht!

does ht help during gaming say with the processes? (virus scanners, aim, speedfan, etc.)

Yes. Anti-Virus programs are a massive hit to overall system performance depending on how they are configured. Some of course like Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee are really bad about how many processes and system resources they take up.

AIM and other programs similarly affect performance in this way. The AMD processors out perform Intel's by quite a bit in games. However, I've noticed that Intel systems were always more responsive overall while playing games and multi-tasking. If you turn off all other things besides the games, and you've got plenty of ram, you can get away with Windows Media player and get much better performance than you would on the Intel's, but having a whole lot in the background will cause the AMD based machines to hiccup alot more than it will a HT or SMP system.

Now when you go with a dually Opteron or an X2, there is no difference. If anything the HT systems are at a disadvantage vs. a real SMP setup.

 

[TheJackal]

ok thanks for all the information.