HyperThreading

UO Noob Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Location: South Texas

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, if not, then I apologize.

My motherboard has Hyperthreading Technology, when gaming is it better to have it enabled or disabled????

Thanks in advance

Ultimate Fanboy Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 508

Well... unless your game is built for multiple processors (and I don't know of any offhand), then the game will only run on a single logical processor, which will cap at 50% of your processor.

About the only thing that increased for my by disabling it was the FPS. Although with it on, if you ALT+TAB and have to play with other applications while it is running, it will be exceptionally smooth switching between apps. But for an extra FPS boost, you'll probably want it off.

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 12:12 pm

Thanks for the reply barbos. Another question on Hyperthreading if I may Laughing

I noticed (in the Radeon 9700 vs FX 5600 review) that you had a 2.8 with the 9800. I've got 2.6 w/the 9700 Pro (not the All in Wonder), when I first turn my rig on after it's set over night, if I go to My Computer/Properties/general, it will show that I'm only using 1.73GHZ of the 2.60, then I have to wait until rig warms up to it's idle temp then reboot for it to show that I'm using the full 2.60. Is this due to the Hyperthreading technology? If so, why must I reboot to get it to use the full 2.60?

Thanks

Ultimate Fanboy Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 508

Are you using a laptop?

UO Noob Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Location: South Texas

Sorry about that, guess it would help if I posted my system info Embarassed

XP Pro w/SP 1
Pent.llll 2.6Mhz, 800Mhz FSB, Hyperthreading.
DFI Mainboard
1 Gig DDR 400 PC 3200 Kingston RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro w/4.3 Cat. Driver & Cyclone graphics card fan
Sound Blaster Live
120Gig and 80Gig slave Hard Drives Western Digital
DirectX 9.0b
400 watt power supply
2 fans blowing in directly on the graphics card
4 fans blowing out in the top of the case
Runs at 82 degree's idle and no more than 97 degree's full load.

Ultimate Fanboy Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 508

I've never heard of that happening, (except on laptops where it slows the processor to save battery)...

Have you tried disabling fan monitoring? Or any type of bios option that allows smart monitoring or dynamic clocking ?

The motherboard could be incorrectly detecting the chip as a 533FSB chip which would clock it down to a 1.732ghz. You might see if there is a bios update for the motherboard.

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 7:58 pm

bios update...

i had the same problem on another pc that i worked on a while ago, and when i updated the bios and made sure the FSB was set to the right frequency it started using all the processor capability.

BTW for your info.... HT tech is excellent for servers or if you listen to MP3's with Music match or something like that what you can do is open up the task manager and set the game your playing for one processor, and then set the MP3 program for the other "simulated" processor. in theory (it works for TechTv when they host lan parties, they use one processor for the server and then run the game that the person plays on using the other processor) it should give you a huge performance boost... i think... never actually trying this i cant tell you from personal experience....