to hyperthread or not hyperthread? that is the question

[CharlesLam]

I have been told recently on another forum that nehalem cpus ended up being hindered by hyperthreading on videogame performance. i currently have an intel x3450 that has done well, and unfortunately i am going to have to put a hold on piecing together an upgrade. currently just have the motherboard atm. would turning off the hyperthreading really help the performance? currently is OC @3.0ghz

 

[Dogsnake]

It helps on applications (games are a type of application) that have been written to make use of it. Otherwise it has no effect whatsoever.

 

[drkatz42]

I have been told recently on another forum that nehalem cpus ended up being hindered by hyperthreading on videogame performance. i currently have an intel x3450 that has done well, and unfortunately i am going to have to put a hold on piecing together an upgrade. currently just have the motherboard atm. would turning off the hyperthreading really help the performance? currently is OC @3.0ghz

Turn off hyperthreading in Bios and see if you get a smoother gaming experience. I believe the experience "should" be the same although perhaps your cpu will run a little cooler.

 

[dextermat]

Most games doesn't utilize it so for gaming: not hyperthread

 

[InvalidError]

In most games and Intel's modern HT CPUs, HT makes little to no difference either way.

Some games perform slightly worse due to threads momentarily sharing a core but some also perform slightly better since the OS has more resources to schedule background stuff on, however little of it there might be.

 

[PaulR08]

I would recommend leaving the HT enabled and boost up your CPU speed if it allows overclocking. That should result in better gaming graphics and response time.

 

[titanHUNTER]

It depends on the game. If the game only utilizes a few cores (Starcraft 2 only uses 2), then HT is irrelevant. However, games like BF3/4 will use ALL available CPU resources, so HT will make a difference. Games like The Witcher 2 uses 6 cores, so HT comes into play. Titanfall if I recall only uses 4 cores (not currently on my gaming rig). However, most modern games utilize multiple cores (from 4 to 8). Thus, the HT prowess of the i7 allows for better gameplay and greater multi-tasking and system stability in that the remaining cores are hyper threaded to serve as processors so the OS and other programs keep running smoothly.

HT is enabled in the i3 processors to keep them from being two-core junk chips! LOL It is also enabled on the i7 for advanced multi-tasking and PC computing power. However, it is disabled in the i5 series because Intel needs a "mid-range" processor for those who value performance (more than i3 crap) but don't need 8 cores (threads in Intel case) for more advanced work that utilizes all the cores.

 

[leeb2013]

I recently switched from an o/c 4.4GHz I5-3570k to a 3.4GHZ Xeon (I7) with hyper-threading (I still have the I5, so could swap it back, but will stick with the Xeon do to its greater performance). I found it gave a noticeable performance boost in many things including recent AAA games which utilise >4 cores (even with 4 core games, background tasks run on the other threads). Hyper-threading works very well and Windows 7 utilises all threads very well, assigning any running tasks to different threads. I think the old issues from years ago, with hyper-threading hindering games, are non-existent. Watching task manager, I can see a nice spread of usage across all threads when several tasks are running and even just background tasks.

Add to that the Xeon using <45W flat out, it's a nice cool efficient CPU.