[SOLVED] Does hyperthreading affect performance?

Nov 8, 2021
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My friend ask me, which one is better between i5 4690 and i7 3770. the i7 have hyperthreading while i5 dont. So is the i5 worse than i7?
he wants to build a cheap gaming pc, and this PC will be gifted as a birthday present for my friends brother, so i hope the answers would be helpful
 
Solution
Me and my friend aware of the socket differences, we just want to know whether the hyper threading will help in performance.
For most software, yes. Software that is written to fully utilize the physical CPUs can benefit from having hyperthreading disabled. Commercial software is not written this way. Why? Because commercial software has to run on dozens of different CPUs. If you were writing custom software for YouTube, for example, you could optimize it for specific CPUs. YouTube would have thousands of the exact same hardware. By optimizing for that hardware, and then benchmarking you can determine if hyperthreading on or off has better performance. I have been an engineer on systems where a basic setup step...
Does hyper-threading affect performance?
all depends on the specific software involved.
some make use of hyper-threading, some of more dedicated CPU cores, some only of single core.

what price would they be paying for this old 3rd or 4th gen CPU?
he wants to build
this type of conversation is always easier with the actual purchaser/builder.
have them make contact themselves through this thread or by creating a new one.
 
Nov 8, 2021
61
2
35
all depends on the specific software involved.
some make use of hyper-threading, some of more dedicated CPU cores, some only of single core.

what price would they be paying for this old 3rd or 4th gen CPU?

this type of conversation is always easier with the actual purchaser/builder.
have them make contact themselves trough this thread or by creating a new one.
Both are second-hand CPU at around 20 bucks, the i5 is 21 bucks and i7 is 24 bucks at a local computer shop
 
My friend ask me, which one is better between i5 4690 and i7 3770. the i7 have hyperthreading while i5 dont. So is the i5 worse than i7?
he wants to build a cheap gaming pc, and this PC will be gifted as a birthday present for my friends brother, so i hope the answers would be helpful
Hyper threading makes a significant difference in most modern games as well as benefiting multi tasking. The 3770 is the better CPU, but please note they do not use the same socket.
 
Nov 8, 2021
61
2
35
Hyper threading makes a significant difference in most modern games as well as benefiting multi tasking. The 3770 is the better CPU, but please note they do not use the same socket.
Me and my friend aware of the socket differences, we just want to know whether the hyper threading will help in performance.
 
Me and my friend aware of the socket differences, we just want to know whether the hyper threading will help in performance.
It depends on the software but from experience as a general rule, I'd always pick the hyper threaded chip. The single core differences are small, the hyper threading will give a better pc experience and will will make for smoother gameplay in modern games. If you wanted to play Battlefield V for example, the 3770 is the better chip for that because it will use all 8 threads. Some of these games aren't very smooth on older 4C/4T chips.
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Me and my friend aware of the socket differences, we just want to know whether the hyper threading will help in performance.
For most software, yes. Software that is written to fully utilize the physical CPUs can benefit from having hyperthreading disabled. Commercial software is not written this way. Why? Because commercial software has to run on dozens of different CPUs. If you were writing custom software for YouTube, for example, you could optimize it for specific CPUs. YouTube would have thousands of the exact same hardware. By optimizing for that hardware, and then benchmarking you can determine if hyperthreading on or off has better performance. I have been an engineer on systems where a basic setup step was to DISABLE hyperthreading in the BIOS.
If you have specific software that has to perform at maximum, then you benchmark it both ways and run with the best performance.
 
Solution

Andrei N

Honorable
Feb 22, 2016
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https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...i73770-processor-8m-cache-up-to-3-90-ghz.html

Basically the single threaded performance should be the same.
The i7 is better overall but this performance difference might not matter.

I do recall however that the Motherboards for the 3xxx series intel are just awful with 0 reliability and high price.
If he wants the system to run reliably for years then the i5 is a no brainer. The 4xxx series intel MB are some of the most resilient ever built and they are dirt cheap.
 

Zerk2012

Titan
Ambassador
Both processors are somewhat comparable.
Most games depend on the performance of the single master thread.
CSGO and GTA V for example.
To that end, the 4690 is slightly better with a passmark single thread rating of 2204 vs. 2074 for the 3770.
But, some types of games do better with more processing threads .
Multiplayer games for example.
In that case, the 3770 with 8 threads is better with a rating of 6371 vs. 5573 for the 4690.
 
Today, in 2022, I'd go with the i7. Difference in Clock and IPC is minuscule at best, but the i7 comes with HT, so all those things that make use of >4 threads will perform better on it, and those who don't care about that many cores won't see much difference.
And depending on the board, you should be able to up the multi a bit on both. Even if it's just the 3.9 GHz 1-core boost with all cores.
Plus cooling shouldn't be an issue, they won't hit the 77W/84W TDP even with a mild oc.

I do recall however that the Motherboards for the 3xxx series intel are just awful with 0 reliability and high price.
If he wants the system to run reliably for years then the i5 is a no brainer. The 4xxx series intel MB are some of the most resilient ever built and they are dirt cheap.
My Z77 board is running fine for the last 8 1/2 years with an oc'ed i5 on it. Bought it new for 90€ back then and it's still perfectly stable.
It all depends on the model I guess. And in case of a used board how the previous owner treated it. Boards also have become more expensive, a board with similar features would set me back at least 160€ for todays platforms.
 

punkncat

Polypheme
Ambassador
If we discount generational IPC increases then yes, mutithreading "typically" counts as about a half a core. So to speak that 2 multithreads are about equal to one core. You find that in many earlier generations that the i5 was just cores and then the i7 stepped up with mutithreading for increased performance.

What is important to note here is that the 4th gen CPU were notably faster than 3rd gen, so would be best to take a look at some performance numbers in order to make your decision, also consider motherboard and such as 4th gen mobo don't work backwards (or forward). 2nd gen mobo can (sometimes) have BIOS revisions to update to 3rd gen.