HT technology

[the froot]

ive been looking into building a new computer for my project studio. first step is to buy a processor. ive heard bad things about getting a processor with hyper threading technology. anyone want to explain?

froot

 

[altitude909]

Its bullshit. My DAW has a 3.4 Prescott which has HT and I have had 0 problems with it

 

[shackrock]

yeah, nothing BAD that i know of. I just have read some people takling bad about it because they probably don't do that much extra. some articleson the net with that attitude. no clue here though, never used one.

 

[(progger)]

Yeah I own a laptop with HT technology and haven't had a single problem with it. Its a great alternative to a real dual processor. I would recommend it

 

[sonnylarsen]

Just like a dual processor, in order for hyperthreading to be beneficial, the software on your system has to take advantage of it. Otherwise they are fine processors and will work well.

 

[altiris]

Ive not heard of any problem directly related to HT. Any way most if not all current P4 have HT. but what problem have you you heard that HT causes.

 

[neilt]

I recently bought a P4 640 (3.2ghz) w/HT. I'm quite happy with it, though I have only had it for a few weeks, and am still figuring everything out. One thing I noticed is some programs see it as being 2 processors.

 

[punkin]

HT is cool...if the application can make use of it, win/win...if it can't, it simply doesn't matter.

Check your sources...you've been mis-informed.

 

[dgatwood]

Ive not heard of any problem directly related to HT. Any way most if not all current P4 have HT. but what problem have you you heard that HT causes.

Hyperthreading causes additional security risks for multi-user servers.

Beyond that, software that sees the two virtual CPUs and thinks it has two dedicated processors and optimizes itself based on that can have significant performance problems in some cases. Hyperthreading doesn't perform anywhere near as well as a true dual core or dual processor configuration unless an application was specifically written to take advantage of HT; an app that assumes threads run on independent cores will bog down severely.

The good news is that you can generally disable it. If you don't have any software optimized for HT, that's probably the best thing to do. It's always funny watching the look on people's faces when they disable HT and their performance improves....