Discussion Thoughts on usefulness of hyperthreading

[judahg460]

Ok so just wanted to throw the question out, how useful is hyper threading really for the basic consumer? Cpus these days have 16-20 cores just for base i7’s, so is hyper threading even relevant? Back about 10 years ago the only systems that utilized such a number of cores was servers. Have applications come to a point where they can utilize that much cpu potential, or are cpus of this capacity just a novelty for the average consumer?

This thought came up while I was overclocking my xeon 1650 v3. I hit a wall at 4.5 ghz, and at 4.6 and the safe voltage cap it was unstable and way too hot. I got the idea to turn off HT, and lo and behold I achieved a very stable 4.6 ghz at a lower voltage and quite a bit cooler than with HT on. My single core performance received a small but definitely noticeable boost as well. This brought forth the thought, if most games dont utilize crazy core counts, and the average user runs basic applications, why not create a cpu model with modest core count, no HT, and then a high clock speed/oc capability and strong single core performance, all at a cheaper msrp? May be overthinking but thats a product i would be very interested in.

 

[kanewolf]

Ok so just wanted to throw the question out, how useful is hyper threading really for the basic consumer? Cpus these days have 16-20 cores just for base i7’s, so is hyper threading even relevant? Back about 10 years ago the only systems that utilized such a number of cores was servers. Have applications come to a point where they can utilize that much cpu potential, or are cpus of this capacity just a novelty for the average consumer?

This thought came up while I was overclocking my xeon 1650 v3. I hit a wall at 4.5 ghz, and at 4.6 and the safe voltage cap it was unstable and way too hot. I got the idea to turn off HT, and lo and behold I achieved a very stable 4.6 ghz at a lower voltage and quite a bit cooler than with HT on. My single core performance received a small but definitely noticeable boost as well. This brought forth the thought, if most games dont utilize crazy core counts, and the average user runs basic applications, why not create a cpu model with modest core count, no HT, and then a high clock speed/oc capability and strong single core performance, all at a cheaper msrp? May be overthinking but thats a product i would be very interested in.

Gaming is not the only use for processors. You have WAY too narrow a perspective, IMO.

 

[judahg460]

Gaming is not the only use for processors. You have WAY too narrow a perspective, IMO.

Most likely lol, just wondered if there was even a market for a base level barebones cpu such as what I described. Im up for being educated on how cpu utilization works based on core counts, and clock speed, and use of single core versus multi core performance