P4 hyper-Threading

[Chris]

wow i was just reading my PC Magazine and there was an article on P4 Hyper-Threading, basically its a technology thats coming out with the new 3Ghz CPu's, i think by the sound of it its basically like a dual setup system except with one CPu splitting the load in half, it says that windows XP will pick up the CPU as 2 CPU's. It also claims that it may improve performace by up to 25%! So what do u think guys and girls, u think it will give Intel a little edge on AMD or what?

 

[DDR-PIII]

hyper threading is already out...

 

[tragic_monkey]

what exactly is hyper-threading

 

[David]

what exactly is hyper-threading

Basically, its where one CPU behaves as two.

It can process two threads at a time, instead of one.

David

 

[lonewolf1983]

hyperthreading is as stated basically being able to process 2 seperate threads of data with the single cpu.
Its been out a while on the prestonia Xeons and has shown some improvement in server apps, whereas being slower in others.
It will be interesting to see how it pans out with regards to consumer apps....
The only benefit is in multitasking and multithreaded apps atm, but id expect software to start getting more and more tailored towards this.

 

[Cuper]

people talk about being able to "turn it on"??? You can turn it on and off?

 

[cack01]

people talk about being able to "turn it on"??? You can turn it on and off?

I imagine the newer mobos will have an option in the bios for it. Of course if you run ME or 98 it will be off anyways .

 

[Cuper]

true, true

 

[Chris]

i wasnt aware it was something that was already out, the way my magzine worded it, it sounded like something new.

 

[David]

i wasnt aware it was something that was already out, the way my magzine worded it, it sounded like something new.

Its new for the home computer (Pentium 4 CPU) but has been around in business/server/industrial computers (Xeon) for a while.

David

 

[lonewolf1983]

yup been out in the Xeon's for quite a while, and is new to the p4 world.
on the xeons you can turn it on or off, id expect you to be able to do so with the p4 version

 

[Tecumseh]

Hyper-threading might not be your friend. If it's true that XP will
see one CPU as two this could be bad news for the real P4 duals.
XP Pro can only see and use two CPUs, right?

 

[David]

Hyper-threading might not be your friend. If it's true that XP will
see one CPU as two this could be bad news for the real P4 duals.
XP Pro can only see and use two CPUs, right?

Hmm... depends if XP only sees two PHYSICAL CPUs, or if it sees what appears to be two CPUs.

David

 

[lonewolf1983]

i dont think XP pro users will need to do anything (at most a patch) since it natively supports dual processors.
The dual p4 problem isnt valid since p4's dont work in SMP