[citation][nom]faux_quad[/nom]Kithzaru: No, it's not like getting a quad, hyperthreading is a big gimmick, it rarely gives more than a 10% performance increase, and sometimes it gives a 10-20% performance decrease. Unfortunately, some under-educated consumers actually fall for it. Hyperthreading has been around for a while, if AMD actually wanted to do it, they could've easily done it by now, but I'm glad they haven't.[/citation]
Actually, the implementation with the i7 basically never gives a performance decrease, and can give up to a 20% boost with basically no increase in TDP or die area. Look at it like a free 20% boost on highly threaded workloads rather than like a quad.