Question Disabling multi-threading in the BIOS and potential issues ?

[eco_bach]

Exploring Google's MediaPipe framework in TouchDesigner on a Windows 10 PC

In the documentation it suggests a huge performance gain can be had by disabling either HyperThreading (Intel CPUs) or Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT - AMD CPUs).
I assume this is done in the BIOS.
I have an older Motherboard (ROG Zenith Extreme) and CPU (AMD Threadripper 1950x)
If I manage to disable Multi-Threading in the BIOS are there any other potential side effects?
Thanks for any feedback!

 

[BFG-9000]

If SMT is disabled then your 16 cores can only run 16 threads instead of 32, which is still plenty for most purposes.

SMT is supposed to allow use of otherwise idle/wasted CPU resources, possible only because most applications are poorly written from a resource efficiency standpoint. But if your application can fully load those cores, then assigning multiple threads to a core will only result in cache thrashing and reduced performance.

 

[kanewolf]

If SMT is disabled then your 16 cores can only run 16 threads instead of 32, which is still plenty for most purposes.

SMT is supposed to allow use of otherwise idle/wasted CPU resources, possible only because most applications are poorly written from a resource efficiency standpoint. But if your application can fully load those cores, then assigning multiple threads to a core will only result in cache thrashing and reduced performance.

You should benchmark YOUR specific application with SMT enabled and disabled. Your specific system may benefit or be slowed. Your data set and your specific configuration of RAM and storage effect the results.
But, I agree with @BFG-9000. If your application will fully utilize the physical cores your CPU has, then SMT will generally slow overall performance because of splitting of caches.