# Hyperthreading In Games



## Klue22

Wow! absolutely steller guide sir, One big rep for you!
Now post a link in your sig.
I was pretty shocked by the results myself, I would have thought HT would have made more of a difference than it showed in your benchmarks, I can now feel confident in leaving HT on w/ my core i7. Thanks!!!


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## r31ncarnat3d

Great benchmark!

It seems like for me the i5 would have been the ideal choice given the HT issue you brought up. Only reason I even went i7 was because of the PCI-E lane limitation on P55.


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## Nautilus

Helps me understand why Phenom II X4 965 and i7 920 is the same at gaming. HT has no effect in gaming.


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## BinaryDemon

So it looks like the "you paid for it, why not use it" guys were right









...well unless turning HT off allows you a higher overclock.


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## r31ncarnat3d

Quote:


Originally Posted by *BinaryDemon* 
So it looks like the "you paid for it, why not use it" guys were right









...well unless turning HT off allows you a higher overclock.

From what I've heard, this is the case. Again, I haven't had the chance to find out through personal experience yet, but I heard that HT leads to higher heat output. By disabling HT, apparently your CPU will run cooler allowing for higher VCore and higher OC.


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## Klue22

Quote:


Originally Posted by *r31ncarnat3d* 
From what I've heard, this is the case. Again, I haven't had the chance to find out through personal experience yet, but I heard that HT leads to higher heat output. By disabling HT, apparently your CPU will run cooler allowing for higher VCore and higher OC.

I can confirm this, I have seen a 10C drop on my core i7 without HT, I was also able to get a higher maximum OC.


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## DuckieHo

Try Fallout 3?

Also, you might want to run each test 3 times to help remove some of the noise since the results are so close.


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## zhevra

Interesting info. +


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## MrLinky

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Nautilus* 
Helps me understand why Phenom II X4 965 and i7 920 is the same at gaming. HT has no effect in gaming.

Well true, if amd cpus had HT they probably wouldn't show much difference either but the 1366 and 1156 cpus generally score better because of higher IPC.

Quote:


Originally Posted by *BinaryDemon* 
So it looks like the "you paid for it, why not use it" guys were right







...well unless turning HT off allows you a higher overclock.

Yup. Although nothing shocking or concrete, it does seem that higher raw clock speed does slightly better than hyperthreading.

Quote:


Originally Posted by *r31ncarnat3d* 
Again, I haven't had the chance to find out through personal experience yet, but I heard that HT leads to higher heat output. By disabling HT, apparently your CPU will run cooler allowing for higher VCore and higher OC.

Very true. As i pointed out in Goal 2, the i7s on air are mainly limited by heat, which HT is responsable for 5-15c extra during load. With it off, this lowers the cpu temp and vcore requirment, thus giveing the user more oc'ing headroom.

Quote:


Originally Posted by *DuckieHo* 
Try Fallout 3?

Also, you might want to run each test 3 times to help remove some of the noise since the results are so close.

Yeah, L4D2, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout 3, and Bioshock 2 tests are planned for the near future. But there are no benchmark programs or timedemos so it'll take a little longer to devise a consistant environment.
Also, the crysis and farcry tests were averaged from 3 runs, and the stalker program runs 4 tests (different weather). But i will make sure the rest are multiple-run averaged!









To all the rest, thank you for your feedback and kind words! The next 4-6 tests are on the to-do list, so stay tuned for more results!


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## mikehunt

I'm guessing the 3DMark Vantage test is multithreaded and the games aren't, or if they are they have less threads than 3DMark Vantage


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## calavera

interesting indeed.


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## grossebeaver

I would actually recommend using a much lower clock speed (3.0-3.6) to really demonstrate any difference between HT enabled/disabled, since the increased core speed reduces potential bottlenecks with the CPU and instead makes them GPU bound. In particular I would like to see the difference in GTA IV, and DAO since they do a nice job of loading up 4 cores.


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## MrLinky

True, a cpu at 3ghz instead of 3.8 or 4 would definitely ensure it was the bottleneck, thus exaggerating HT vs non-HT results. However, i dont see too many people with their i7 oc below 3.8ghz, meaning the 3ghz results would be purely academic and almost irrelevent (because it doesn't test a common real-world senario).

However, you still have a valid point, so i will retest GTA IV at 2.67ghz (stock clocks), and will do a normal and 2.67ghz run of Dragon Age. Thank you for the idea, and you can expect the results later tonight (10pm-ish, 2/19).

EDIT: ran gta benchie on stock clocks and pulled _better_ fps than 4ghz... I'm going retest all settings (including stock clocks) with a custom walkthrough. Thanks grossebeaver for helping me discover that! Sadly all gta and dragon age results will be posted tomorrow


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## koji

Interesting stuff, + rep

Now I don't have to do all the benches to figure it out for myself


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## 2thAche

I'm not buying that HT would rightfully give a 5x increase in the AI score, or that it means anything real-world. Then again, I've never considered 3dmark to be real-world, just a good tool for refining/comparing.

Honestly L4D2/L4D would be the benchmarks I'm interested in. By my own tests (timedemos) it scales well to more cores but not linearly. Most games these days don't do any better on a quad from a dual core except for L4D/L4D2.


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## Jersthecool

Great thanks so much for this! +Rep


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## darkz

+rep
ht was something back then, overrated now


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## 2thAche

L4D, L4D2 should be in this as they are actually multi-threaded games.


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## eXqUiSiTemB

Very cool stuff! Thanks for sharing


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## tweaker123

wow this is realy intresting!THX! +rep
will you be doing l4d2 soon? thats like the only game i play lol


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## MrLinky

Wow, I made this thread almost 3 months ago and im still getting rep







I was just going to let it go but, but if people are still interested, I could do some more benchies? Like L4D2, Metro2033, Bad Company 2, and Borderlands?


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## tweaker123

Quote:


Originally Posted by *MrLinky* 
Wow, I made this thread almost 3 months ago and im still getting rep







I was just going to let it go but, but if people are still interested, I could do some more benchies? Like L4D2, Metro2033, Bad Company 2, and Borderlands?

PLZ DO L4D2 and BC2 PLZZ!!!!







i have this paged bookmarked lols


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## DXcellence718

Nice benchies


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## Mr SniffelzZzZ

More benchmarks! Would be interesting seeing new competitor's 4.2Ghz HT off/on







.
+1


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## jj22

Those vantage scores are interesting! I would leave HT on IMO, but I also use virtual pc running linux, windows server, and xp while in windows 7. I dont know that it actually makes a difference but im assuming it does. I love being able to play Starcraft 2 while I have vpc or photoshop on a second monitor!


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## Drug

kinda knew ur comparioson would be like this, HT is a must!


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## Woundman

Quote:


Originally Posted by *MrLinky* 
Wow, I made this thread almost 3 months ago and im still getting rep







I was just going to let it go but, but if people are still interested, I could do some more benchies? Like L4D2, Metro2033, Bad Company 2, and Borderlands?

Great job, MrLinky! If it wouldn't be too much to ask for, could you please do a benchmark for *World of Warcraft*. I'd really appreciate it. Thank you! +Rep


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## Yukss

great thread. I just turn off ht and my temps drops about 12c which is great. My loads temps are now 67c vs 78c with ht on. Im gonna keep this feature off for a while. I also drop the vcore to 1.28v


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## venom55520

i was wondering, can you disable 2 cores and run HT on HT off benchies? i'd love you long time.


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## lem_

awesome thread! now I can increase my Mhz


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## Shrimpykins

These results should be predictable really.

The application is either going to use the extra logical CPU's or it isn't. If it doesn't, then it won't benefit from the extra logical CPU's. It's more about what the application in question is coded for and not so much if you have HT on or off. As long as you aren't reaching 100% usage across all cores you should get the max performance possible from a given CPU with a given clock speed.


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## InsightSoul

Good job with the reviews. It appears that modern games can't take advantage of 8 threads yet. HT is only good if you need it.


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## heraisu

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *MrLinky;9166255*
> Wow, I made this thread almost 3 months ago and im still getting rep
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was just going to let it go but, but if people are still interested, I could do some more benchies? Like L4D2, Metro2033, Bad Company 2, and Borderlands?


Don't the devs claim that Assassin's Creed 2 was threaded for up to 16 or something like that??

Would be a good game to test if you're offering


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## victorofhavoc

seeing as we're closer to ivy bridge now. maybe you should run some of the latest games to see what the results are? like the new alice game, dirt 3, brink, and crysis 2??

if i owned any of them I would run the test myself for you and post it here. If you don't have time I might just be able to do that...haha


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## kyle-reece

Any chance you could do a test with an RTS game where theres a lot of AI? preferably starcraft 2 of shogun 2 total war if you have them (or if theres a benchmark i don't know of)


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## mothrpe

I think modern games just max out at 4 cores usage.......I'd be interested in seeing what a 2 core/4 thread vs. 2 core/2 thread would result in. Perhaps by disabling half your cores then comparing with HT on and off?

One game I could see possibly benefiting from the 4 core/8 thread would be world of warcraft, can you bench that perhaps?


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## Hitesh12

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *mothrpe*
> 
> I think modern games just max out at 4 cores usage.......I'd be interested in seeing what a 2 core/4 thread vs. 2 core/2 thread would result in. Perhaps by disabling half your cores then comparing with HT on and off?
> One game I could see possibly benefiting from the 4 core/8 thread would be world of warcraft, can you bench that perhaps?


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *venom55520*
> 
> i was wondering, can you disable 2 cores and run HT on HT off benchies? i'd love you long time.


Same here. 4 cores are enough for every game right now. Now when extra real core or logical are available there is no workload on them.
It would be interesting to see comparison between 2 core ht off vs 2 core ht on , on a game which can use more than 2 core.
This way there will be a load on the logical cores and we will be able to see how they perform.

Anyway awesome work , proves that 4 core is enough for gaming . +REP !


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## MrLinky

To all of the recent posts: I'm happy you find my work helpful, but I don't own the setup used for these benchmarks anymore (and new tests wouldn't be comparable).

For those interested in the 2 core/ 4 thread performance; I remember someone else did just such as test, although it wasn't focused on gaming. I will edit this post when I find said tests.


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## Hitesh12

Do post something good related to 2 core 4 thread performance


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## MrLinky

Okay, I didn't find the original article I remember reading, but here are a few that touch on dual-core hyperthreading:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/01/03/intel_westmere_32nm_clarkdale_core_i5661_review/6
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2901/12
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=27571&page=7

Hyperthreading, essentially, allows a CPU core to process two threads simultaneously. Now normally this would mean a 0% performance increase, but if the two threads share resources or require identical computations, the core can get more work done. This isn't a magical process though; the game has to be specifically coded to take advantage of Hyperthreading (which is rare).

The verdict is, four physical cores will always beat a dual-core with Hyperthreading. Always. It takes some major overclocking for a dual-core to even come close to a quad-core without Hyperthreading. However, if you're building a budget gaming PC, the money saved by choosing a dual-core can be invested in a better GPU. Unless you are going CFX or SLI, or have a high-end card (GTX 680, HD 7970), a modern dual-core WON'T bottleneck your games.

Keep in mind that over 50% of gaming PCs today have dual-core CPUs. You can rest assured that any game you buy will be well optimized for two cores.


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## Casuist

Seriously, THANK YOU so much for the several hours your no doubt spent to compile the results and write this article!!

I literally signed up on OC just to say that, though I was long overdue for that anyway.









Cheers!


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## iron19924u

MrLinky can u please guide me about HT in case of sleeping dogs game, @rig : i got 3rd gen i5-3210m processor, AMD Radeon HD 7670m 1gb, Win 7 home premium 64 bit, 4 GB RAM 1600 Mhz. I hope this info will be sufficient for telling that HT on will be helpfull or off.
Thanks


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## IBooNI

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *iron19924u*
> 
> MrLinky can u please guide me about HT in case of sleeping dogs game, @rig : i got 3rd gen i5-3210m processor, AMD Radeon HD 7670m 1gb, Win 7 home premium 64 bit, 4 GB RAM 1600 Mhz. I hope this info will be sufficient for telling that HT on will be helpfull or off.
> Thanks


I would just leave it on.


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