to hyperthread or not?

[mike_sanfil]

I just built a new computer for my brother and I was wondering if it would help gameing at all if i turned off hyperthreading. I don't think it will help if I am only running one game that doesn't support it. I know many think it is dumb to build a gameing maching with an intel, but I also wanted it for encoding purposes.

Intel 2.8ghz 800mhz FSB
Asus P4P800 Deluxe
256X2 Geil Ram
80gig WD hard drive
Radeon 9700pro

so should i disable hyperthreading for gameing?

I play games like:

Halo PC
NFSU
Deus Ex
UT2003
Warcraft3

[pc_dr.j]

Given your current specs and the fact that you're not running anything except the games, turning off hyperthreading is virtually useless.

The hyperthreading feature was intended by Intel for its CPUs to handle multitasking functions - that is if you're playing games and listening to mp3s or watching DVDs at the same time. If you're only playing a game and nothing else, HT is just another useless program.

If you really want to see some gaming improvements you could opt for better hardware -- 3 GHz CPU, 1GB DDR400+ memory, Over 100GB HD with SATA, Radeon 9800 PRO 256MB or GeForce FX 5950. But overall your system looks great and I wouldn't recommend an upgrade until maybe next year.

Hope that helped

[mike_sanfil]

ya, i have no intent of upgrading, except for some speakers. I just built the system last week so I have spent all the money I want on that. I just wondered if a simple bios setting change would help, since i have never used hyperthreading before.

[pc_dr.j]

Well as I said before... unless you're running 2 or more applications on your computer, HT wouldn't be that much help or a hindrance

Also, if you are using Win2K, don't even bother with HyperThreading unless you have a specifc need for multiple thread scheduling (you a programmer?). Without going into the technical details, HT currently works best with the WinXP kernel core.

Robert Richmond

[mike_sanfil]

na, i am just using xp for now. And as for a programmer, maby in the future. Although I did take a twenty week corse in Visual Basic. lol

[Jeordiewhite]

You could experiment with it, just to test it out and see if it helps any. If you then decide it is no real use, then turn it off if you feel the need to.
I have a friend who does programming, for anything else he does, he basically feels it's nothing more than a gimmick, however going with intel or amd for gaming, both are great, but intel usually costs more and amd kicks but with price/performance by far.
However the athlon XP 3200+ is the last in the 462 slot a processor, they basically pushed it's intereface far enough.
Next will be a new line of athlons and the opteron and athlon 64 do crunch very well. However it woulnd't really help anyone at the moment except for just sheer performance of them.
You should be plenty satisfied with what you have now as it is pretty fast anyhow.

[ArcticFox]

I say leave it on, but run some benchmarks to see what works best.

[Xtreeme]

Ah, leave it on. It might kick in once in a while. Try encoding some Divx or DVD's and surfing the net or somthing. That would be cool. Should be able to handle that easy enuff. Least its doing "somthing" then.

[mike_sanfil]

ya, maby i will test with it for a while and see what I get. I just remember on my last thread someone telling me that hypertheading kills games.

thanks for you help